


Right Where It Belongs

by MrRiddle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Gaping, Anal Sex, Drugs, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Forced, Gore, Humiliation, M/M, Multi, Multiple Partners, Not Canon Compliant, Oral Sex, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Humiliation, Slash, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-03-29 19:09:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3907357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrRiddle/pseuds/MrRiddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harry and Dursleys get into a car accident, the Boy-Who-Lived is presumed dead. However, ten years later, by some miraculous coincidence, he is found alive and well and a squib. He is once again targeted by the Dark Lord, once again cornered by Dumbledore and the Order, but Harry has his own demons to fight and his own life to save. He wasn't born a hero, nor was he born to have it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This story is based on characters created and owned by J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros. and various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, and Raincoat Books. No profit is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. All rights reserved to original characters and spell craft.
> 
>  
> 
> This is an experimental work, I suddenly started, while working on my other fics' chapters. It is named after the song, that had partly inspired the mood of the whole story – "Right Where It Belongs" by Nine Inch Nails. I honestly do not know what to make of it, I could continue it, but I am not so sure that it is interesting at all. It is depressive and unhealthy, twisted, so it leaves me wondering, if it is even worth it...
> 
> Please be warned, that this work contains graphic depiction of sexual abuse and humiliation. Consider before reading.

_What if everything around you isn't quite as it seems?  
What if all the world you used to know is an elaborate dream?_

_..._

“Do you ever wonder if you were born for something bigger? For something much, much better than this?”

“What?” Allen tore his eyes off of the football matches timetable in a newspaper and stared at his friend, blinking often. “Sorry, mate, I wasn’t listenin’. What were you sayin’?”

“I said do you ever wonder if you’re here by mistake?” Harry sighed, frowning at the other’s insensitiveness. He averted his gaze and carried on with his mindless watching over the streets, dim and barely visible in the heavy morning fog. Early risers and night workers would sometimes pass by the glass and he would flinch a little, as if he had seen a ghost.

“Sure, sure, all the bloody time!” Allen put the newspaper away and propped his chin on one of his scarred fists. “Whatever is wrong with you lately, Harry? You keep givin’ me these weird vibes, you know.”

“Vibes?” he asked quietly, not looking at his companion.

“Yeah, like you’re all about philosophy now, and all that rubbish. Wake up, Harry, don’t die on me, mate, come back into the real world before it’s too late!”

“Sorry, Allen,” Harry tried to smile, finally turning to his friend and pushing his own plate towards the man, as a peace offering. “I just feel so down, so depressed. You know, it’s hard to live alone and all on my own, hard to be an adult.”

“Come on, it wasn’t any easier when we were with the Willows,” Allen huffed, gratefully stuffing his mouth with Harry’s chips. “Besides, you’re not alone – we’re in this together, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” he chuckled, smiling warmly at his so-called brother.

“So what is it, that’s really botherin’ you?” Allen bit out, champing. “I know you too well to believe this depression-nonsense.”

He and Allen grew up in a foster-home, taken in by the Willows family – a couple, that had been raising six adopted children for the sake of governmental compensation, that they were paid monthly. They were far from exemplary parents, they both were drunkards and drug abusers, and the father, Bob, was also a man of a very short, violent temper. Allen’s knuckles never healed properly, being blooded almost all the time they lived there.

Harry had changed three homes before he moved in with the Willows at the age of twelve and stayed there right until he became a legal adult. First were the Dursleys – his actual relatives, who had so generously taken him in after his own parents died in a car crash. His aunt hated him for some inexplainable reason and forced him to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs, but other than that she and her husband were quite alright. However, Fate loved to play ill tricks on Harry and when he turned ten, he lost the Dursleys as well, once again, in a car crash, which he miraculously survived. It was one of his worst memories and he hated how much it tormented him still in his dreams. He actually regretted losing his aunt and uncle, for what followed after was worse than any nightmare.

His first foster-family were the McCormacks, in Manchester – a very lovely middle-class family, that one could see in a TV advertisement of cat food, vacuum-cleaner or something like that. Only it was a carefully mastered façade, behind which the real monsters hid. Mr McCormack was a very, very nice gentleman, who loved little boys so much, he even preferred to take them to bed instead of his own wife, who, in fact, didn’t see anything wrong with that. She even enjoyed watching him do it. Harry’s second worst memory was of Mr McCormack’s cock in his mouth. Luckily, apart from being a shy and a passive boy, he also was a good biter, when it came to it, and a good runner too. The night when his foster-father tried to rape him, the man lost not only the ability to ever fuck again, but his freedom as well – a policeman caught naked Harry, covered in McCormack’s blood, running down the street and crying on the verge of his lungs.

His second foster-family were the Bredfoods, also in Manchester – a christian family of a brother and a sister, who took in the children to raise them in severe discipline and in blind faith. Harry managed to stay there for almost two years, having had learned all the prayers by heart, and having had learned not to cry when he was whipped. He also learned there, that God didn’t really exist. Famished, abused both physically and mentally, he was hospitalized for two months after Father Bredfood was arrested for theft. As it turned out the priest stole the church’s funds and started his own sect, to suck the money out of his followers’ pockets as well.

And then Harry ended up with the Willows in Liverpool. He and Allen were brought in together – Allen’s previous family was also arrested for something – and since that very day they have never once parted their ways. Allen was a year and half older, almost twice bigger than Harry, and he took him under his protection. Why though, they both still had no idea. But it didn’t really matter, because they survived. They reached the finishing line and were completely free and, just like they used to dream, lived in London now.

“It’s been more than a year since I left the Willows and joined you here,” Harry said ruefully, waving his hand in the direction of the empty tables of the pub, that they both worked at. “But I feel so useless, I feel powerless, as if my whole life I have been struggling for something in vain. This freedom is absolutely senseless. I wish I could explain better,” he sighed, hunching his shoulders and taking his head into his hands.

“You’ve always been a romantic, Harry. Now that all you have to do is make ends meet, you feel like you’ve lost a purpose, right?” Allen gave him a skeptical look-over. When his friend nodded, he smacked his lips and took a sip from his cold coffee cup. “It always has to be a grandiose battle for you,” he shook his head, chuckling. “Otherwise you don’t feel like a hero or like a martyr.”

“I never was a hero – you were, beating the shite out of Bob and every other jerk, that tried to hurt me,” he muttered. Allen had been boxing since he was nine.

“Oh, mate, I’ve told you readin’ won’t make you any good. Don’t you understand that some people are born to get everythin’, and others – we, for example, – are born to have nothin’? Some are born heroes, others are born to stand in the line at the placement office and wait for any kind of job to come, to at least have a decent meal once in a while.”

Allen was always the oldest and the wisest in their tandem, the authority. A rationalist, a realistic man, he could actually achieve a lot, if he wished to, but he felt comfortable tending to a bar and fighting on the ring twice a month. He even convinced the owner to give Harry a job at the pub as a waiter, even though he had no experience whatsoever.

“Yeah, yeah, I know all that,” Harry said bitterly, taking his spectacles off and cleaning them with the hem of his working shirt. “I just… I’m sorry, Al.”

“It’s fine, as long as you can keep up smiling for the clients,” his friend lifted his shoulders up indifferently. “You’re only nineteen, Harry, there’s still a life ahead of you and me. Let’s not regret something, that hasn’t passed us just yet.”

Harry put the heavy round frame back onto the bridge of his nose and looked out of the window again. He couldn’t simply accept this, this hollow existence, when he knew, he just knew it in his very heart, that there was something different waiting for him, something, he was meant for. A premonition of sorts – something was calling for him, something kept him awake at nights, kept him on the tips of his toes. An impending doom. He was frightened and excited for something to finally happen.

Harry mopped the floors, cleaned the tables and put all the chairs up, helped Allen put the glasses into the washing machine, and then they both left, having had locked the pub for the day. In twelve hours they will have to return to work again. However, they parted at the door into their tiny shared apartment.

“Where are you goin’?” Allen asked, yawning, as he kept turning the key inside the hole, which needed to be changed years ago, but they never deemed it necessary to spend money on something so insignificant.

“I… Promised Katie to meet her at the Piccadilly,” Harry told him sheepishly.

“Why are you still hangin’ out with that whore?” The man sounded irritated. “Wasn’t it enough that she slept with half of our class? She even slept with Bob, for god’s sake!”

“I am not seeing her anymore,” Harry lied, “She just asked me to meet her today, she might be in trouble…”

“Yeah, pregnant again, or, worse, finally got herself somethin’ nasty, like AIDS or somethin’. Listen, Harry, it’s your business whom to fuck, certainly, but don’t be that sort of a bloke, who keeps comin’ back to the same bitch, simply because she would never mind to spread her legs for him,” Allen growled and finally opened the door with a loud bang. “And don’t lend her any money!” he shouted and entered the narrow hall, not expecting Harry to follow.

He fled while he could. Katie was their “sister” from the Willows family, and she has been making a living on the streets from a very young age, selling her body to older men, who paid well. She was Allen’s first woman, Harry’s, Maxwell’s, Sam’s and others’, who grew up next to her, and also a bunch of kids from their school. But Harry wasn’t sleeping with her anymore – he was buying from her. Weed mostly, sometimes pills and acid, if he had a spare ten quid. And recently he has been using more often, simply because he had no other way to fight this anxiety, that was gradually building up inside him. Drugs helped a lot to subdue his apprehensiveness.

He came out of the underground and walked over to the fountain, lowered himself onto the cold edge of marble foundation and concentrated on watching the feet, that moved back and forth, past him. Shiny shoes, high heels, old and worn sneakers, working boots, tourist flip-flops… He counted how many green pairs he would see, before Katie came.

“Ya neva late, aren’t ya?” She stood in front of him, scratching on her naked thigh – her skirt was so short and tight, it looked as if it almost didn’t exist. Thankfully, she at least wore her underwear.

“Hi, Kat. I want to get home fast, because I need to get some sleep, I’m bloody tired,” he told her and finally glanced up. She looked awful. She had been using heroin for almost half a year now, and looked more like a walking corpse. Who would want to fuck something like that? Definitely not Harry.

“Maybe ya should try somethin’ stronger for that insomnia of yours?” Katie plunged down next to him, crossed her legs in the most seductive manner and leaned closer, to put a small package of weed and pills into the pocket of his jacket.

“Don’t think so, honey,” he offered her a wry smile and took a cigarette pack out of his jeans, opened it and held it out for her – Katie pulled the scrolled banknotes out and hid them in her bra. Then she took one of the cigarettes and waited for him to light it for her.

“Why don’t ya find a place of your own? How long r’ya gonna live with that Allen? He’s worse than a mother, always pushin’ ya around,” Katie shrugged one of her shoulders, blowing a light grey smoke into his face.

“Why should I? I won’t be able to buy from you then.” Harry also put a cigarette into his mouth, lighting it up.

“Your scar is red again,” she noted apathetically, glancing at him briefly.

“Yeah, it hurts again. That’s because I need some rest,” he explained, involuntarily rubbing on it. This thing kept throbbing for as long as he remembered himself. Sometimes it even swelled and stung, giving him horrible migraines, but he was quite used to it, so he learned to simply ignore it.

“Wanna fuck?” All their conversation ended with the very same question and the very same answer.

“No, thank you.”

“Suit yourself then,” Katie stood up and walked away, swaying her arse as hard as she could. Harry watched it impassively, smoking, and soon left as well. He decided to walk all the way down to Knightsbridge, to breathe morning air before he would load himself with acid.

However, his plans were not meant to be executed. As soon as he covered a hundred meters, somebody grabbed him on the upper arm and pushed him harshly into the arched passage of the nearest house. Coppers. Harry cursed under his breath, obediently holding his hands up and against the brick wall.

“What do we have here? Acid, LSDs,” one of them cackled menacingly. “Well, well, and where did you get it, son?”

“From a prostitute, I don’t know her name,” Harry solemnly replied. This he was also used to.

“Nothing new under the sun,” the other policeman clicked his tongue. “You will have to go with us, lad.”

“Alright.” He just knew that he wasn’t going to get rested today.

The holding cell was just as welcoming as ever. Whores, beggars, drug-addicts, gang members – all the representatives of London’s highest society were gathered in one stuffed room with bars. Harry was rudely pushed inside and he had to stumble and land on his fours, to not fall onto somebody and get beaten for it. Rules were rules. He was surveyed for a while, as any newcomer usually would be, but then they all lost any interest and he could freely crawl away, towards the wall and take his spot.

“Potter!”

He jerked, woken up by a loud rumble. Looking around sleepily and blindly searching for his glasses, that had fallen askew, he tried to find the source of the sound.

“I’m on your right, you, blind bat! Get your arse out, we need to have a talk!” A big, stocky man snarled at him and opened the cell. Sergeant Doyle, his old “friend”.

“Yes, sir,” Harry hurried to lift himself up and scrambled outside.

“You’re a pathetic piece of acid-using shite, Potter,” the man kept growling, as they entered the huge office of the station. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop, or I will fucking make you serve time for good and make a beautiful addition to your record?”

“Sorry, sergeant.” Was all he could say to that. He and Doyle knew perfectly well, that he wasn’t going to stop using. Nobody ever stopped.

“I’m sick and tired of all this shite. I’m including this into your record, boy,” Doyle muttered and opened the file, when they both sat down at the opposite sides of his desk.

Harry winced, but there was really nothing he could do about it. He was caught red-handed, multiple times, and he never learned his lesson. In all honesty, he deserved this.

“What?” sergeant looked up at him, and his thick moustache twitched a little bit. “Oi, don’t give me that pleading look, scarhead. It’s too late. You should have listened, when I told you to. Now this is going to be your problem, Potter,” he pointed a meaty finger in Harry’s direction and continued to write mercilessly, mouthing the words to himself, like an eight year old.

A man, who sat at the next desk and had been describing something that he witnessed to another sergeant up until this moment, suddenly looked up, eyeing Harry curiously. He was around twenty – twenty five years old, his short ginger hair was brushed back in an old fashion, and he wore a sharp three piece suit, like some dandy from an old film. Unnerved, Harry pushed his glasses up his nose and intentionally ignored this stranger and his intent staring.

“Potter, if you tell me the name of her supplier, I might miss a few arrests in my report,” Doyle distracted him from being watched.

“How would I tell you something I have no way of knowing?” he asked incredulously. “The whole point is that I know only her and nobody else. I don’t even know where she lives! She phones me when she has something to sell.”

Doyle let out a heavy sigh, giving him one of his classic glares, and returned to sealing Harry’s destiny. His pen flew quickly over the paper, filling in the spaces between the lines. But Harry couldn’t think about it – he still felt that weirdo staring at him. Losing his patience, he raised his head up to shoot him a glare, and the gingerhead instantly cowered, blushing in embarrassment.

“Get the fuck out of here, Potter,” Doyle said, obviously disappointed. “Next time you get here, you will be speaking to a different officer and you won’t go home after that.”

“I understand, sir.”

Harry shuffled his feet towards the lift. He looked to his right, at the window, while he walked, and groaned whimsically to himself. The light of the setting sun cut through the gaps in the window-blinds, making him squint. He had spent the whole day in that cell. Making yet another wrong decision of today, he halted at the phones and picked up the receiver, pushing the blank buttons to dial the pub’s number.

“Yeah, Al, hi, listen… I won’t be working tonight,” he mumbled, trying to sound indifferent.

“What have you done this time?” He heard a tired sigh on the other end of a line and winced, half-ashamed, half-irritated. Allen really wasn’t in charge of his life and had no right to be disappointed in him.

“Nothing. I just… I can’t work tonight.”

“Don’t tell me you’re high again!”

“I’m not! Fuck, I’m bloody clean!” he shouted back, creasing his brow and twisting his lips in anger. He wished he was high. “I just can’t do it tonight.”

“Fine, fine, whatever you say, Harry.” Allen hung up.

“Fuck you,” Harry hissed at the dial tones and slammed the receiver against its base.

“Whatcher doin’?! Stop breakin’ our goddamn phones!” Somebody spat at his back, but he didn’t pay it any heed.

Harry stomped into the lift angrily and pushed the button, fuming. His fuzzy reflection in the heavy iron doors made him click his tongue in disgust and he raised his hands up to untie his disheveled pony tail. It took him a second to realize, that there was also a second reflection next to his.

“I’m very sorry for intruding, sir,” that redheaded weirdo addressed him meekly. “But have I heard it right, that your name is really Harry Potter?”

“It is, so what?” he gritted out, holding the elastic band in between his teeth, while fruitlessly trying to comb his long unruly hair back into a decent copy of a tail.

“But it simply cannot be!” The man stepped closer to look into his face, or rather at his scar. “How is this even possible?”

“The fuck do you want from me?” Harry snapped, having had decided to leave his hair loosened and whichever way it wanted to be.

“Oh, sorry, I’m so sorry!” the gingerhead tried to placate him. “It’s just quite a shock! What would the others say?! Oh, but this is incredible!”

“You’re a fucking lunatic and I’m leaving,” Harry told him and darted out of the carriage as soon as the doors slid apart. He ran outside and into the street, habitually diving in between the pedestrians and soon lost his stalker. London was full of bloody perverts.

Harry rested at a bus stop, counting the change in his pocket – not much, not enough for a dose. He closed his eyes in exasperation and clenched his fists, hating himself for what he was going to do. Yet no matter how much it hurt his dignity, he kept doing it every fucking time.

The hot and overcrowded space of a low-class nightclub met him with a deafening banging of the latest electronic hits and with blinding lights of projectors, that roamed above the dancing, sweating teenagers in a hectic pattern, changing their colours from blue to green and acid yellow. Squinting, Harry made his way straight to the bar and leaned against the counter, looking around seemingly impassively and lazily, but in fact he was searching for a sponsor. The beat resonated in his ribcage, it seemed as if his own heart was dancing, jerking to the rhythm of music…

And here he was. An older man in a long brown coat approached him, and offered to buy him a drink. His face was so ugly and unpleasant in its expression of eternal disgust, that Harry even contemplated to reject him altogether. But the sight of the man’s wallet changed his mind. Several minutes later he was brutally shoved inside the toilet stall. Harry barely managed to sit down on the pan, when a thick, short cock was forced into his mouth. Gaging, he breathed, trying to push the bile down.

“Don’t take your glasses off,” the man rasped, when he reached out to do just that. Harry obediently put his hands away and opened his mouth as wide as he could, helping his “customer” to push his penis deeply into his throat. “Yes, little whore,” he muttered, holding Harry’s hair in his fist and tugging on it painfully, “You like my cock, don’t you?”

Harry couldn’t talk, he could only moan in reply and cough on his own saliva. Both hands grabbed on his head and held it in place, while the man quickly nailed his cock into it, wheezing loudly. Bitter, warm sperm floated down the back of Harry’s throat and he coughed harshly, choking on the meaty flesh, that throbbed on his tongue, but he wasn’t allowed to move away.

“Here, slut!” Several quids were hurled into his sweated, salivated face and he was left alone.

“Oh, god,” Harry hiccuped, feeling the bile coming out after all, and fell onto his knees to throw it up into the toilet. “Oh, god,” he whined, retching and crying at the same time. Those were not tears of pain, but tears of shame.

He crawled out, picking the money up and stuffing them into his pockets, and hung on the edge of a sink, trying to wash the vomit off of his face. Somebody else entered the lavatory and stopped right behind him. Harry raised his eyes, to look at the reflection of yet another client interested in his “services”.

“You servin’?” Was the simple question.

“A blow or a fuck?” Harry asked wearily, rubbing the water off of his face with the back of his hand.

“Fuck.”

“Twenty quid,” he said, and the man nodded silently.

Without any other word Harry turned around and stepped back into the stall, taking his jeans and pants off, and bent down a little, setting his hands against the wall. He heard the stranger spit into his hand and rub the saliva onto his penis, which then penetrated his anus painfully, but he never made a sound. Harry bit into his lower lip, breathing heavily, and bore with the burning sensation of being stacked again and again, faster and harsher, faster and harsher. A sweaty hand squeezed his flaccid cock and balls, only worsening the pain, but soon let go of him, followed by a low groan of ejaculation.

Somebody’s semen was wetting his underwear, while he counted the banknotes at the club’s exit, where dealers usually hung out. Now it was time for some pills.

**XXX**

The door into his office flung open with a thud and Minister Fudge jumped up in his seat, letting out an indignant squeak.

“Mr Weasley!” he cried, affronted. “What on Earth do you think you’re doing, barging into my office like that?!”

“Minister, minister!” For the first time in his life Percy wasn’t listening to the authority. He danced towards the desk, for he could hardly keep still. “You would never believe whom I’ve just found! I’ve found Harry Potter!”

It was only then that he noticed a tall figure in a coned hat – professor Dumbledore turned away from the window and stared at him in a most comical expression of pure excitement and utter disbelief.

“What did you say, Percy? Harry Potter?”

“Yes, yes!” the wizard cried, terribly proud that he would be the one to bring such important news to Dumbldore himself. “I saw him at the police station! You see, a muggle tried to rob me, and I was giving my statement, when I saw him coming in! He has the scar! The lightning bolt right above his brow, and he has the green eyes, and he wears glasses, just like James Potter does in that photograph at the Hall of Fame in Hogwarts! And I heard it, I heard the sergeant say his name loud and clear. I even followed Potter out and asked, and he confirmed that his name is indeed Harry-can-you-believe-it-Potter!”

“Now, now, breathe, Percy,” the old headmaster patted him on the shoulder, seeing how red the wizard turned in his face. “Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet.”

“What, you believe this to be a pure coincidence?” Fudge finally spoke up, having had turned pale instead. The news were truly terrible. When the Dark Lord hears about this… Oh, he hated to imagine what kind of fury would be unleashed upon them all.

“Harry has been missing for almost ten years now, and no matter how hard we looked, there was no trace of him. I had to believe that he died along with his relatives in that horrible incident,” Dumbledore admitted sadly. “The fact that he is alive and well, and lives in London right under our noses certainly gladdens me, but we must not keep our hopes up just yet. We must first meet him and see if he is the real Harry Potter.”

“Fine, fine,” the minister raised his hands up in a submissive gesture, “Do whatever you wish, Albus. Only don’t blame it on me, when the Dark Lord comes knocking on your door! Have you thought of the consequences? When he discovers, that the child of the Prophecy is actually alive…”

“Yes, Voldemort will think, that we have tricked him and betrayed his trust yet again, and he would try to start a new war,” the old wizard solemnly replied, ignoring others’ violent flinching, that always followed the cursed name. “But I am very eager to share the truth with him, that is, if the boy is really the Harry Potter.”

“Share the truth?!” Fudge’s jaw slacked down a little bit.

Ever since his return in 1995 - after Dumbledore had been abducted and nearly killed, forced to participate in the warlock’s resurrection ritual - the Dark Lord refused to carry on with his war, preferring to stay away and watch them all out of the shadows. There had never been any peace treaty signed by either of the sides, for the Death Eaters were still performing these sudden, vicious attacks all over the country, keeping them all awake at night and constantly vigilant. But other than that, they coexisted in an unstable harmony, which was better than nothing, of course.

Fudge kept his position only because he promised the Dark Lord to serve him at his best abilities and never rejected any of the legislations that were introduced by the Dark Party during the Wizengamot sessions. It was only Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix, who were still fighting Him-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. The minister never understood why hadn’t the Dark Lord killed the old headmaster, when he had the chance, but knew better then to ask one of them. And Dumbledore kept his position at Hogwarts, which gave him a huge influence over the country, solely due to the fact, that the Boy-Who-Lived was dead! As soon as the Dark Lord realizes that he was lied to, he would no doubt destroy the school or, worse, turn it into a Citadel of the Darkest Arts, and would taint the minds of the innocent children with his poison…

“All you have to do, is keep quiet about it for a few days,” Dumbledore told him seriously, and gave Percy a very meaningful look. “That concerns you as well, young man. You must not tell your friends and colleagues a word of it. Besides, they will find out soon enough, when we bring Harry in and talk to him.”

“C-certainly, professor,” Weasley jerked his head, swallowing hard. “But how are we going to find him? I tried to follow him in the streets, but he was obviously scared of me, so he ran away…”

“Go back to the station and simply ask about his address,” the headmaster folded his hands behind his back. “Police employees surely have a complete registration file at their office.”

“B-but he doesn’t work there,” Percy averted his gaze, blushing. “He was… He was arrested for this thing, that muggles use… The drugs, the call it.”

“Wonderful, not only has he miraculously resurrected, he is also a criminal,” Fudge groaned, hiding his face in his sweating hands.

“I am certain, there has been a misunderstanding,” the old wizard smiled.

“It didn’t look like it,” Percy muttered under his breath, recalling how rude and aggressive Potter was towards him.

“Alright, let’s not make fruitless guesses, but find out the truth, the sooner the better?” Dumbledore clapped his hands in front of his chest. “Go to the station and retrieve the address, Percy. Pass it on directly to me, and I shall visit him personally. You will find me at the Leaky Cauldron.”

“A-alright, sir,” Weasley mumbled and, having had thrown a scared, pleading look at the minister, rushed out to do as he was ordered.

“Cornelius,” the old wizard called him and the warning in his tone could hardly be overlooked.

“Yes, yes, I won’t report anything today, but you have a day, Albus. A day,” Fudge raised his index finger to emphasize his point and watched the headmaster nod at him in understanding and vanish in the greenish flames of the fireplace. The minister only hoped, that the Dark Lord would listen to them first and then kill, not the other way around…

**XXX**

Like a beaten dog Harry sat on the steps of the porch, that led into the building, in which their apartment was situated, and couldn’t make himself come inside. It was early morning and Allen was, of course, asleep after the long shift at the pub. He didn’t want to wake his friend up, to have to explain himself, to listen to the endless reprimands again… Harry was still high on acid. He could feel it in his blood – his head spun and pounded heavily, and his eyes and tongue were swollen. Only an idiot wouldn’t conclude that he was on drugs, and Allen wasn’t one. And no matter how much he drank and chewed a gum, there was still this bitter taste of somebody’s cock and sperm in his mouth… He felt disgusted with his own self, and the last thing he wanted, was to see the same emotion in his friend’s eyes.

He pulled the pack out of his jacket – there was only one cigarette left. And he had no money to buy more. Sighing in resentment, Harry put it in between his lips and brought the lighter close to its end, trying to stop his hands from shaking so much. All of his life seemed to be a mere joke, a vicious circle of sucking cocks and then regretting it. He smiled bitterly to himself, thinking that the drugs were not worth it, but this constant humiliation definitely was. He often wondered if he really liked being the martyr so much, as Allen told him… Perhaps, he did.

He blew out the dark smoke, that instantly dissolved into the heavy fog around him, and let out a long, heavy breath, feeling his heart flutter painfully. Smoking is killing you, only sinners smoke, he told himself, imitating father Bredfood’s high, unpleasant voice in his mind. This is all the devil’s work, boy. He inhaled again, out of spite, enjoying the lightness, that turned his head.

“Harry Potter, I presume?” An old, gentle voice made him shudder in surprise, but he didn’t show it.

“Who’s asking?” he gritted out instead, really not in the mood to be respectful and polite.

“My name is Albus Dumbledore, and I was a friend of your parents,” the voice told him and Harry turned towards it despite his better judgement. The word ‘parents’ sent shivers down his spine. Nobody knew him except for Dursleys, but they were dead…

There stood a very old man with a very long, white beard. He was dressed in some sort of a robe, that was so colourful, that Harry blinked a few times, thinking it to be a hallucination. But the crazy pattern of triangles, flowers, hexagons and apples was still there. His eyes accessed the smiling face, the warm gaze from behind the small reading glasses, the coned hat, that was covered in stars and comets…

“What are you, some kind of a Merlin look-alike?” It would be quite fitting to have a clown for a family friend.

“No, I am a headmaster at a school,” Dumbledore said mirthfully and easily lowered himself onto the step, next to the young man.

There could be no mistake – it was Harry. His face was the perfect copy of both his parents’ combined, his eyes were certainly Lily’s and they had the very same light inside them. And the scar… It still looked fresh, as if the boy had been injured just recently. But its shape, that changed along with the growing body, suggested it was the very same, famous scar, left by the Avada Kedavra eighteen years ago…

“A clown school?” Harry chortled, coughing on the smoke.

“No,” professor smiled softly. “Quite the opposite of that. Anyway, how have you been, my boy? I’ve been looking all over for you, but I couldn’t find you. I thought you died.”

“That’s a nice way to start a conversation,” he snorted, louder this time, and threw the cigarette onto the ground, stomping his foot onto it. “I don’t know, how have I been. How have you been, Albus?”

“Terribly sad, but now that I see you in person, I feel very happy indeed.”

“Alright, alright, good news,” Harry sighed, rising up. “Well, it was nice to have a little chat with you, old man, but I have to go home and sleep it all off, I am working in ten hours.”

“Actually, I thought that you might be interested in meeting some other friends of your parents?” Dumbledore also stood up, looking the boy over pitifully.

He was so thin and so pale, his long raven hair was dirty and disheveled, his shirt was stained and torn on the hem… It didn’t look like he was leading an easy life.

“Whatever for?” Harry turned around sharply, feeling angry all of a sudden. “Where have these friends been, when my parents died in a car crash? When Dursleys died? I haven’t seen you or anybody else.”

“I am terribly sorry for that, Harry,” Dumbledore admitted, lowering his gaze and folding his hands guiltily behind his back. “You were very young, when I brought you to Petunia, and the times were tough, we simply didn’t have the luxury… And when that incident happened… Harry, please, I am an old man, who had made so many terrible mistakes in his life. But would you let me amend this one? Let me help you.”

“And who said I need help?” He set his hands against his hips, irritated and tired. The waves of acid dizziness were still washing over him and his tongue wasn’t obeying him that well. But he stood straight and tall, not showing any weakness.

“Well, I might be guessing right now, but something is telling me, that you don’t know anything about magic, do you?”

Harry froze for a second, astonished, and then laughed into his face, holding onto his empty, aching stomach.

“You’re crazy! Go home, get sober!” he waved at the strange man dismissively and turned to open the door.

“I was right,” Dumbledore sighed. “How about a cup of tea and a plate of good old fried eggs, then, Harry? You wouldn’t refuse a free breakfast from a friend, now, would you?”

His insides churned traitorously, and Harry hit his head against the door glass helplessly. He was hungry like mad, the drugs only worsened the sensation of being eaten by some invisible monster inside. He hunched his shoulders and once again looked back at the oddest acquaintance he had ever had. Was it really that easy to buy him?

“Breakfast, and nothing more.”

“Breakfast, and nothing more,” Dumbledore agreed.

Harry took a few hesitant steps down the porch and towards the old clown. A hand grabbed him by the shoulder and before he managed to move away, he was sucked inside a narrow tube of air and light, turned upside down a few times and finally spat out onto the soft rug.

“Shite, that was rough,” he bit out, retching. But nothing came out – he had no liquid, no bile to throw up. “I haven’t had such a strong trip before,” he mumbled, having had pulled himself together.

“Molly, please, pour Harry a cup of herbal tea.” He heard the same old voice ask somebody, and the clatter of dishes instantly followed it, along with a very quiet whispering.

Harry stood up on his shaky legs, rubbing on his stinging eyes, and looked around what turned out to be a huge, dark, well furnished room, that looked more like a scene from a film, or from Oscar Wilde’s play – definitely not the real life of the 2000. And then he slowly took in the people, that were sitting at the small dining table and were staring at him, as if he was Jesus Christ himself. They all were dressed the same funny way like that Dumbledore man was.

“Where am I?” he breathed out, involuntarily taking a step back. His mind refused to acknowledge the fact, that he had just been standing outside in a poor, industrial area of the city, and just a second later he appeared here… Wherever it was.

“Harry, it’s alright, do sit down – you might need to do it anyway in the course of the discussion we will have,” the headmaster told him kindly, waving his hand. A vacant chair jumped up and ran towards Harry, only to stop right behind him.

“What is this…” He stared wildly at it, blinking often in confusion. He had never hallucinated that hard before!

“Sit down, dear, you look terribly pale,” a ginger haired woman approached him with a cup in her hands – they trembled slightly, as if she was frightened, or excited, or both. “This is only tea, Harry, please, drink it,” she pressed.

“I’d rather not,” he shook his head, but lowered himself down, fearfully looking at the seat, expecting it to bite him on his rear.

“It’s fine, Molly, he will drink it later,” Dumbledore assured her and turned to Harry again, leaning back on the table and folding his hands over his chest. “Now, I should explain it all and hear your side of the story, Harry, for, as it happens, there has been some grave misunderstanding…”

“Yeah, you do that, before I woke up,” Harry muttered in reply, blushing fiercely under intent, even piercing stares of those, who were gathered in this place. He especially disliked the way two men, standing in the shadows, watched him, as if they tried to dissect him like an insect under a school microscope.

“First, magic exists, Harry. We are all here wizards and witches, and so are you.”

“Yeah, right,” he snorted sarcastically.

“Second, your parents were also wizards, and they didn’t die in a car crash. They were killed by another, very dark wizard,” Dumbledore carried on, ignoring the boy’s skepticism. “As I’ve already told you, the times were hard, I had to leave you with Petunia, for she was your only relative, and her blood could protect you from the said wizard and his minions.”

“Very interesting,” Harry said dryly. “And even if it was true, why haven’t I been told any of this before?”

“I believe, Petunia wanted to shield you from the pain and the bitterness of the truth. It is much easier to accept that you parents died by an accident, and not by somebody’s will. You almost died that night too, Harry.” Dumbledore took a short pause, waiting for another biting remark, but the boy was silent. His eyes were lowered and he watched the pattern of the rug apathetically, motionless, almost catatonic. “Have you ever wondered where had this scar come from? It is a mark, that Lord Voldemort left, when he tried to kill you with a terrible, powerful Killing Curse.”

“You know, I have this strangest feeling, that you are going to tell me, that I am a super hero, whose destiny is to save the whole world from the big bad Volde-whatever his name is,” Harry cackled quietly, not looking up.

“Well, it wouldn’t be very far from the truth,” the headmaster hummed thoughtfully.

“Oh, my. I hope I am not allergic to kryptonite.”

A nervous giggle from the crowd, or rather a hiccup, piqued his attention and Harry glanced up in its direction. A young girl of his age stood on the side, covering her mouth and reddening in embarrassment. When everybody else also turned to look at her inquiringly, she, it seemed, tried to make herself invisible, but to no avail.

“It-it’s a muggle thing,” she explained in a meek, trembling voice. “Harry refers to the Superman – a hero who came from a planet…”

“Enough, Miss Granger,” one of the men, who hid in shadows, finally spoke up. His voice was low and cold, full of disgust. “We do not need a lecture on muggle fiction, thank you very much.”

“What’s a muggle?” Harry asked indifferently, watching that menacing figure out of the corner of his eye.

“A person, who doesn’t possess magical powers,” Dumbledore replied.

“Alright, enough with this bullshit,” Harry rose up sharply. “You promised free breakfast – I am getting it and going the hell out of here!”

“Alright, alright,” the headmaster hurried to agree. “Please, sit down at the table.”

All the men and women rushed to free the space and crammed themselves into the nearest corner, watching him in fascination. Bloody perverts, he thought acidly to himself, and plunged down onto the nearest chair.

“I hope you’re not going to poison me,” he noted plainly, when a huge plate with eggs, bacon, toasts and beans was placed in front of him. The heavenly smell made him high again, and he dug in greedily, not waiting for a reply.

“When was the last time you ate?” A second shadowy man finally stepped forward, coming into the light.

He was tall, thin, not very old, but the grey has already touched his temples. His short brown hair was brushed back in that old-fashioned manner again. The face looked worn, its features sharpened, dark circles lay under his eyes – he looked like a junky himself.

“Yesterday mornin’,” he chewed out in reply, hastily stuffing the food into his mouth.

“This is professor Crouch Jr,” Dumbledore introduced the man, “He is one of the teachers at the school I’ve told you about.”

“Yeah, the clown school, I remember,” Harry nodded, gulping down the tea, that the Molly woman helpfully pushed towards him.

“Why do you let him be so disrespectful towards you, Albus?” The one who interrupted the Granger girl came forward as well. He looked just as menacing and cold as he sounded. Harry couldn’t decide what was blacker – the man’s hair or the man’s eyes. “His ignorance doesn’t mean he is allowed to show such rudeness!”

“Severus, look at him,” Crouch rolled his eyes in exasperation. “He is obviously distressed, dehydrated, malnourished and scared. How would you have behaved yourself, were you in his shoes?”

“Appropriately,” that Severus man scoffed.

“Professor Snape,” Dumbledore waved his hand in the direction of a snarky overgrown bat, “Is also a teacher. All of us here are teachers and students from Hogwarts, school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

“And here I thought I was the one, who’s high…” Harry drawled, shaking his head amusedly. “Alright, as soon as the acid is out of my system, I will wake up and forget all about this stupid dream. So fire away, what else do you have up your sleeve, old man? Demons, angels, unicorns, fairies? Aliens?”

“You’re high?!” Snape whispered icily, turning white from anger, which Harry thought to be clearly misplaced.

“Yeah, so what?” he stretched his back, feeling pleasantly full and warm. He had never had such a weird but all in all nice dream before.

“Harry, is that true, that you are using drugs?” Dumbledore peered at him somewhat chidingly.

“That is none of your business. I am a legal adult and entitled to make my own choices,” he yawned and stood up, scratching on his side. A window, that he approached, looked over a very fashionable and a very quiet London neighbourhood. But he couldn’t say where it was.

“Perhaps, you could tell us how exactly have you survived?” Crouch offered, sensing that a dangerous kind of tension was building up in the room.

“Where do I begin…” Harry drawled mockingly, propping his glasses up playfully, pretending to be full of himself. “Naturally, I don’t remember that one time when a dark wizard murdered my family,” he cackled snidely. “As for the Dursleys… Well, we all were in that car, and I, being smaller than them, simply flew out of the window and floated down the river to the shore, like a bloody Moses.” He twisted his lips at the joke about his terrible experience, that Allen liked to tell so much.

“But I saw a burnt child’s corpse in the police report,” Dumbledore said, straining the muscles of his face to avoid wincing at the horrible memories.

“That was Dudley – their biological son, he was born half a year after they took me in,” he explained, walking around the room and touching the rich fabrics of sofas, armchairs, pillows and curtains. “Nobody knew I was there, I was found only two days later by some homeless men. They took me to hospital, and then the child services sent me into a foster-family in Manchester.”

“What a horrible, horrible fate!” A sternly looking woman gasped, pressing her bony, veined hand to her chest – tears gathered in her eyes, behind that squared frame of her spectacles.

“Nah, it was fine. I am alive, after all,” Harry shook his head, coming back to the window, to look out again. It all seemed too real, so lifelike, so familiar… Deep in his heart he hoped, he desperately hoped it wasn’t a dream…

“Was it a kind family at least?” Granger girl asked tentatively, looking at him with sympathy. She was obviously the sanest person of them all here, she even wore a normal pair of trousers and a sweater.

“They all were okay, I guess,” he shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

“How many were there?” Crouch stepped closer, peering at him intently.

“Three,” Harry said sourly.

“And why did you change families so often?” Dumbledore asked, already sensing that he didn’t really want to know the answer.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Harry furrowed his brow, scratching on the scar, that started burning again. “When will this dream be over? I didn’t take that much pills, to be out for so long.”

“This isn’t a dream, Harry,” Molly said quietly, rubbing tears of off her cheeks with a napkin. “You are finally home… Oh, dear, I can’t…” she sobbed and pressed her face into a shoulder of a gangly looking ginger haired boy, who looked suspiciously similar to that weirdo at the police station.

“Harry, why do you think you need to take drugs?” Dumbledore dared to ask. “Is there any serious reason behind it? I do not wish to berate you, I simply wish to understand why.”

“Well, not because I am a happy person, obviously,” Harry sneered and sat down on a sofa, feeling suffocated all of a sudden, strangled by that anxiety, that was haunting him for so long. He grimaced, as he slumped forward to put his head into his hands and to grab on his own hair. His scar hurt even more now, unbearably so. “This is the worst kind of a dream ever. Because I know that I will wake up to my horrible, hollow life, to my addiction and my poverty. I will wake up to torment myself with the memories of the imaginary world, that is unreachable for me, just like everything else. I have this emptiness inside me,” he placed his right hand over his heart, closing his eyes, as if listening in to the beat. “This emptiness, it grows bigger and bigger, it feast on me and takes all of my powers away from me. Whenever I feel happy or content – it devours these feelings, leaving only pain behind. Do you know, what I am talking about? Does any of you know, what it is like? That is why I use drugs. Drugs help me forget, help me fill this emptiness up for a short moment.”

“But it is merely an illusion,” Granger whispered pitifully.

“Like all this is not?” Harry snorted, standing up again and walking over to the window. He couldn’t sit still. Because he was crying on the inside, he was mourning the moment he would have to wake up and find it all to be the best dream he had ever had. This was what he had been yarning for all these years – to be a part of something, to belong, to have a home… “I need to wake up now, I don’t want to be here any longer.” He pinched himself on the arm, hissing in pain, but nothing happened – a small bruise appeared on his skin, but he was still standing in the room, full of these wizarding weirdos.

“Potter, you are not dreaming,” Crouch once again took a step closer. “This is real and you are a wizard. You need to calm down and take a sobering potion. You are obviously sick and in a need of medical help.”

“Barty, stop wasting your breath,” Snape sneered, as he angrily strode towards the table to sit down, swaying his cloak dramatically over his shoulder. “Potter is just as stubborn as his useless father used to be.”

“Severus,” Dumbledore sighed, shaking his head and looking at the wizard chidingly.

“This is all my sub… What is this thing called, sub-conscience or whatever,” Harry grimaced, taking on an impassive look. “Terrence warned me, that sometimes trips can turn ugly, like you get stuck in your own mind. Very much like the Matrix,” he murmured, pushing his hand into the back pocket of his jeans and taking the small flick knife out – he carried it for protection. “He said sometimes you need to inflict pain on yourself to wake up.”

“No, Harry, wait!” Hermione was the first one to realize what he was going to do, but she wasn’t fast enough to point her wand at him.

Harry plunged the blade into his stomach, squeezing his eyes tightly shut and counting to ten, as he tried to bear with the horrible pain, that slashed through his whole body.

“Idiotic fool!” Snape flashed through the room, like a black lightning, to reach him, while Crouch hurried to grab on his hands and pull them away from the knife.

Blood floated out of his mouth as he slowly fell to his knees, held up by somebody’s strong grip. Harry felt the heavy darkness press onto his eyelids, felt his lungs constrict in a bout of suffocation – he readied himself for a rough waking up, but it simply wasn’t coming. He still heard distant sounds of people arguing loudly and rushing around the room, the voice of Dumbledore trying to calm them down, somebody’s fast muttering somewhere above his ear…

“He must be really out of it,” Crouch let out a breath, as he finally finished healing the wound. Snape put away the potion he had been pouring over it, and pulled a different vial out of his inner pocket to press it against the boy’s dry blue lips.

“Why isn’t his magic helping him?” the potions master asked, looking up at Dumbledore, when the old headmaster came over to them to see the result of their work. “He couldn’t have harmed himself, it should have prevented him from it, or at least assist in healing, but it took Barty’s spelling and my potions to close the wound…” His brow was furrowed in a dark scowl. “Either these muggle drugs had seriously injured his brain, or…”

“He can’t be a squib,” Crouch whispered, eyeing the others, who were still arguing between each other, only Merlin knew about what. “It is impossible, he vanquished the Dark Lord, had he not?!”

Dumbledore peered into Harry’s pale, sweated face worriedly. The scar was bleeding, the boy’s eyes were moving rapidly underneath the lids, the cracked, bloodied lips trembled slightly. If they were not here to save him, he would have died within minutes like an ordinary muggle! But the mere idea of the Boy-Who-Lived to be a squib seemed preposterous.

“It cannot be,” he breathed out, waving his magic wand over the thin body. “It cannot be.” But it was. There was no trace of magic in Harry James Potter. This was the reason why he couldn’t find the boy, why they thought he was dead. There was simply nothing their own magic could be linked to.

“So, what is your explanation, Albus?” Snape asked nonchalantly, as he moved away from the boy, who was going to live yet again. “How come, that the child, who destroyed the Dark Lord and miraculously survived an Avada Kedavra and a car crash, almost died from a simple cut?”

“Could the Killing Curse drain him of all of his powers?” Crouch addressed Dumbledore, whose face was contorted in a mask of grave concentration and thought. “It would explain him being a squib and his survival that night. And the car crash… Well, I’ve heard of a far more unbelievable survivors in the most horrible accidents in a muggle world, it could really be just a pure coincidence, pure luck.”

“I can’t offer any other explanation, Barty,” the headmaster sighed, closing his eyes tiredly. Yes, he was right to not keep their hopes up. It turned out to be a tragic misfortune after all. They found the Harry Potter, but he could never defeat Voldemort.

“Albus, what do we do?” Minerva McGonagall approached them, looking down at Harry and crying into her hand. “He tried to kill himself! His magic is gone! What happened to this poor boy?!”

“Life happened,” Snape retorted snidely. “You should all leave now, no point in standing and staring at this corpse, he wouldn’t come around soon,” he told the others, who were circling the sofa impatiently.

“He will have to stay here, Minerva,” Dumbledore said, rising up heavily. “We can’t put him into Hogwarts or St Mungo’s, it is still far too dangerous. Hermione, would you be so kind as to stay by his side, watch over him? Ronald, you may stay as well, if you want to, I am sure Harry would appreciate a company of his peers when he awakes.”

Both Ron and Hermione nodded, as they stood, holding their hands together. It was hard to believe that there lay a hero, that had once saved them all, a hero they dreamed to meet in person. The Boy-Who-Was-a-Squib-and-a-Junkie.

“If you need anything, contact professor Snape or me. We would provide any potions he might need. Molly, please, stop crying and go home. You don’t need to stay here,” he said softly, when her wail disturbed the silence, that had fallen so imperceptibly.

“Will you also leave, professor?” Ron asked the headmaster somewhat nervously. “What if he wakes up and goes all bonkers, when he realizes, that it hasn’t been a dream after all?”

“He isn’t a wizard, Weasley,” Snape huffed in exasperation, “You would manage to put a muggle out, wouldn’t you? Or are you that incompetent?”

“I would stay with them for a little while, if you don’t mind, Albus,” Crouch said, shaking his head at his colleague’s antics. “Just in case his condition would worsen. I don’t have any classes today, and the papers can wait until evening. When he is out of danger, I would return to the school.”

“Thank you, Barty,” the old wizard smiled at him gratefully. “Keep me informed. As for others,” Dumbledore addressed the members of the Order of the Phoenix, “I hope that you all would keep everything, that has happened here today, a secret. Do not tell your families just yet, I strongly recommend against it. We must decide what our next move should be, now that Harry Potter is still out of the picture. His role would be defined later, when his health is improved.”

He was still talking, as he followed them all out of the room. Their voices still echoed in the distance, when Snape apparated away, leaving Ron, Hermione and Barty Crouch alone with the motionless body of the fallen hero.

“How could Harry Potter become a bloody squib?” Ron brushed his fingers through his short ginger hair helplessly.

“This is a most unfortunate trick of Fate,” Crouch murmured, not looking up at his ex-student. “I have no idea how these drugs might affect his rehabilitation. Do you know anything, Granger?” He glanced up at the bushy haired mudblood. He had always despised her for being an insufferable know-it-all, petted by Dumbledore and his followers. But right now she could actually be useful.

“I will have to look it up, sir,” Hermione said softly, cowering under his unkind gaze. “I know that they wear out the immune system, making it an easy target for all kinds of terrible deceases, so we should perform a blood-test, to see, if he has… Anything,” she finished uncertainly. When the older wizard arched his eyebrows inquiringly, she winced, as if pronouncing these words was painful for her. “If he is a squib and has been using drugs for a long time, he might die of a simple cold. And if he used cocaine or heroin…He might even have HIV or AIDS – incurable deceases, that lead to most painful, horrible death…”

“No shite!” Ron whistled in astonishment. “I thought squibs were immune to muggle illnesses.”

“They are not,” Hermione shook her head sadly. “They are vulnerable just like muggles…”

“I see,” Crouch hummed thoughtfully, looking at the pale, scarred face of the supposed Savior. “Fine. Weasley, I’ll give you a sample of his blood, you will take it to Snape, while Granger and I would be monitoring his state.”

Ron wanted to object, but Hermione’s worried glance made him hold back on his outburst and he reluctantly complied, nodding grimly. The wizard held out a small vial, that he had filled up with the blood from the boy’s face and wound, Ron took it and vanished into the thin air with a quiet pop.

“I… I will go to the library and be back soon, in a minute,” Hermione said meekly, watching Crouch fearfully.

Even though he wasn’t a Death Eater and was Dumbledore’s loyal follower, she was still wary of him – as a dark wizard, he left an impression of a man, who wouldn’t hesitate to stain his hands in others’ blood if he needed to. A man, who would use whatever means at his disposal, in order to achieve his goal. Perhaps, they truly needed to have somebody like him in their midst, but she still felt uncomfortable being around him.

“Go, Granger, take as much time as needed. I won’t leave Potter’s side until the evening,” the wizard replied, not sparing her another glance, as he prepared a wet compress and placed it onto the boy’s forehead.

The girl disappeared, leaving him face to face with the one, who was supposed to be dead. Crouch wiped the sweat from the pale, sullen face and inspected the scar. It seemed to be aflame, it bled ever so slightly and pulsated – it was obvious that it brought just as much pain, as the wound did, if not more. He checked the inside of the arms, where he thought muggles usually injected heavy drugs, but the skin was clean there.

When he and Snape were trying to heal the knife wound, Crouch felt something on the boy’s back, as he held on to his side, but he didn’t have the time and wish to look at it in front of everybody. Now, while he had the chance, he decided he would inspect it as well. He carefully lifted up the torso and turned it to the side, enough, to pull the shirt up and glance at the boy’s thin back – it was covered in multiple, ugly scars. Potter had been whipped some years ago, mercilessly. No wonder he hadn’t made a sound when he stabbed himself to death – he was used to hurt. Crouch placed him into his previous position and covered him with a warm blanket, taken aback by what he had discovered.

Those families, that Potter had changed in the course of his life, were clearly not very fond of him. And as a squib he couldn’t use his magic to heal his injuries or to lessen the pain from the physical abuse he was subjected to… Crouch couldn’t say he felt any sympathy towards the boy, but he experienced this unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach – he was no amateur when it came to beatings and torture. He instantly remembered his father and the way he was forced into obedience, the scars that covered his own body… It was so much easier to inflict pain upon others.

“You are a tough one, aren’t you, Potter?” Crouch asked the young man, who wasn’t going to answer him any time soon. “That’s a good quality to possess in our time,” he added somewhat melancholically and placed another compress onto the scarred brow.

He heard Weasley apparate into the hall, instead of the room, and curse loudly. Granger appeared a few minutes later with a stack of books in her hands and under her armpits, and soon both teenagers immersed themselves in reading, while the dark wizard continued to change the compresses and monitor Potter’s unsteady pulse and ragged breathing.

**XXX**

Harry concentrated on the pain in his scar, for it was the only real thing, that he could feel and recognize. His whole body went limp, it seemed, and sleazy numbness was slowly crawling up his legs – he wanted to move his toes to make blood circulate again, but he was simply too weak for that. He could hardly raise his chest to take breaths. Somebody’s hands kept touching him and pressing something wet and cool against his face, Harry wanted to turn away, but his head weighted a ton, even though it felt empty on the inside.

It took him ages to lift the trembling eyelids up and focus blindly on his surroundings – despite the fact, that his glasses were not on his nose, he could tell, that he was still in that very same strange room, if the blurry form of that Crouch man was anything to judge by.

“Am…” His lips were so dry, they shriveled up and took him some time to tear them apart. “Am I… Still dreaming?” he croaked, sighing heavily. Every sound, that he produced, resonated with a hurtful blow in his forehead and made his stomach churn and twist in pain.

“No, Potter, I’ve told you already, that this is the reality,” the man replied dryly and leaned closer, becoming sharper in his eyesight. His fingers pulled on Harry’s lower eyelids, brushed against his neck and finally rested on his wrist. “How does it feel to be stabbed?” The sarcastic question reminded him of what had happened and he groaned pitifully, wincing. What had he done to himself?

“Like shit,” he muttered. A cup was pressed against his lips and warm water poured inside his dry, stinging mouth, renewing the copper flavour of blood, that was staining his tongue.

“Thought so,” Crouch chortled mirthlessly.

“Harry, how are you? Are you in pain?” Granger’s face appeared in front of him. “I have a potion that can help you.”

“N-no potions,” Harry whispered, finally making his head move from side to side. “I must feel it, otherwise I would go insane…”

“You still don’t believe us?” The freckled face of that gingerhead boy appeared next to the girls’. “Mate, magic is real and we are real, and you’re one big loony stabbing yourself like that! We thought you’ll die on us!”

“We didn’t think that!” Hermione objected, flushing.

“Well, I did,” Ron shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, you’d better take that potion, Harry. No point torturing yourself.”

“You two may do you bickering later, when I am not here,” Crouch glared at them and then turned back to Harry. “But you, Potter, should take the potion. There is a long way to recovery ahead of you and, believe me, it won’t be very pleasant.”

“Fine…”

A cold glass was then pressed against his lips and Harry twisted his face in an expression of disgust, as a foul concoction filled his mouth and slid down his throat. However, as soon as it fell down into the stomach, he suddenly felt much better. His head stopped pounding and he twitched his fingers, finally in control of his limbs.

“Much better, isn’t it?” Crouch noted dryly, shaking his head.

“How long have I been…” Harry blinked often, squinting and trying to make something out of the light, which source he couldn’t see. The man put his round spectacles back onto his nose.

“The whole day. It’s evening already.”

“Fuck…” He grabbed on his spinning head, as he awkwardly sat up with Granger’s help. “Allen… I must tell him I’m fine, he will be worried…”

“Who’s Allen?” Ron asked, chewing on something, that looked a lot like a chocolate bar. He had taken a chair and now sat on it, watching the show of Harry Potter coming back to his senses and to the world of the living.

“My flatmate and a friend,” Harry sighed ruefully, as the memory of their last conversation came to his mind. “We grew up together, he’s the only family I’ve got.”

“Here,” Granger offered him a mobile phone, one of the fancy flip ones, that had just appeared on the market. “It’s a cell phone that allows…” she began, when she noticed Crouch’s curious glance, but was interrupted.

“I know what a mobile phone is, Granger,” the wizard cut her off coldly. “Potter, I believe you would be discreet in your conversation with that friend of yours?”

“If I tell him that wizards kidnapped me, he would submit me to a psychiatric ward. No, thank you very much,” Harry drawled humourlessly and dialed the number. “Hi, Allen.”

“Harry?! Jesus, where the fuck are you?! I’ve been worried sick!” Allen’s screams were so loud, that Harry had to pull the phone away from his ear.

“Woah, it’s like a Howler, only in person!” Ron said appreciatively. “Thank Merlin, my mother can’t use one of these.”

“I’m fine, Al. I ran into a friend of my parents… No, I’m not high, stop asking me that! I really met a man, who knew my parents, he sought me out. Yeah, he invited me over and fed me, and we talked for a very long time… Anyway,” Harry sighed, stealing a glance at Crouch, who shook his head gravely. “Mm-mm, I won’t return tonight.”

“But why?” Allen was talking quieter now – he must have taken the phone into the kitchen, to escape the pub’s din. “Can’t you see him some other time again? Surely, if you’ve already found each other, you could very well have another meetin’.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry tried to think of a way to worm himself out of this mess. He couldn’t tell his friend that he stabbed himself, because he was so high on drugs he couldn’t tell a hallucination from reality, could he? “I think I’m coming down with a flu, I have a fever and this man, he offered to stay at his place. If it gets worse, he would drive me to the hospital.”

“You aren’t whorin’ yourself for money again, are you?” Allen groaned desperately. “Harry, please tell me you are not doin’ it again.”

“Al, I swear to God, I am simply sick and for the first time in my life there is somebody else beside you, who is willing to help me.” It hurt to hear, that his friend thought of him so poorly. He, of course, wasn’t living up to high expectations, but he felt it to be very unfair of Allen to take his every word for a lie. “I will call you tomorrow. No, you don’t have to come here. I will tell you everything when I come back home.”

“Fine. I will believe you this one time, Harry. But if you lied to me again…”

“I’m not lying. Listen, I’ll come home and I will tell you everything. Promise. Bye,” Harry hurriedly shut the phone close and gave it back to Granger. “Thanks. I hope he won’t be calling back every thirty minutes.”

“It’s fine,” she smiled at him coyly.

“You can’t tell him about magic, even if he is your family – muggles can’t know of us and our abilities,” Crouch warned him, giving him a stern look over.

“Yeah, about that,” Harry sat up straighter, wrapping the blanket tighter around himself. “So, if all this is real, and I am a… Wizard,” he laughed at that. “How come I never… Well, did anything magical? How do I know I am a wizard?”

“Well, technically…” Ron rubbed on his neck uncomfortably. “You are not a wizard. Like, you can’t wave your magic wand, like we do, and perform magic. Because you are a squib.”

“What’s a squib?” Harry felt he would go crazy from all these odd terms.

“A person, who doesn’t possess magic, although they were born to both wizarding parents,” Crouch explained. “However, even though you can’t perform magic, you are still entitled to live in our world, to work amongst the wizards and you are entitled to your family’s money. You are a Potter, after all.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t keep my hopes up,” he sighed, inwardly disappointed. It was just his stupid luck, that he couldn’t have what he most desired. “And what does this ‘you’re a potter after all’ mean? What, you’re telling me I’m rich?” He laughed again. “Impossible!”

“More like ugly rich,” Ron muttered enviously.

“Potters were an ancient pureblood wizarding family, and the were very rich, true,” Crouch replied impassively. “Now that you are alive, you can inherit everything, that your parents left for you, before they died. I was led to believe, that there is enough for a lifetime.”

“So I’ve spent almost twenty years of my life in poverty and constant famine, while there was a golden pot of my own, of which I hadn’t had the slightest notion…” Harry drawled, smiling bitterly. “How ironic.”

“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Granger sat down next to him, wincing sympathetically. “But now that you know the truth and found your true home, you can change your life. You can quit drugs, improve your health, move to live in the world of magic, you may even get an education in something, that doesn’t require spell casting. Like, potions, for example.”

“Wait, you seriously expect me to run into the arms of that old man Dumbledore and accept everything for what it is?” Harry gave her an incredulous look. “Sorry, dove, I don’t feel like it at this particular moment. It’s cool that I’m wealthy and all that, but I’ve learnt long ago, that money never come easily, nor do they come for free. So there is a trick somewhere, isn’t there?” He turned to the older man, who, he felt, was the one to have the adequate answers to his questions.

“It depends,” Crouch said ambiguously, as his face remained as calm and impenetrable, as ever. “I believe that nobody would object your right to have your money and property back. However, there are still many questions and problems, that must be resolved in the meantime. I am, unfortunately, not the one, who can give you a straight answer, Potter. Try Dumbledore – he’s the one who sees you as a Savior, not me.”

“Oh, right, he said something about me being the superhero, whose destiny is to defeated this bad guy Volde-something.”

“You shouldn’t take it so lightly, Harry,” Hermione reprimanded him. “The Dark Lord is merciless, he is a psychotic mass murderer and he is the most dangerous wizard alive.”

“What, he’s bulletproof?” Harry asked skeptically. “Why not just blow him up? Do you really need me to do it for you?”

“But there is a Prophecy, that says, you are the only one, who can vanquish him!” Ron exclaimed. “It doesn’t matter how many of us would fight him – it’s only you, who can defeat him. Besides, he is afraid of you!”

Harry looked himself over and, having had propped his glasses, coughed a few times into his fist.

“I’m still convinced one of us is high,” he finally bit out, cackling. “You’re all a bunch of crazies. Okay, let’s pretend for a moment, that I believe all this rubbish… How am I – a squib as you called me – supposed to defeat a very dangerous and mighty wizard? I really see no option but to throw a hand grenade at him. Honestly, I’d rather take the money and leave it as it is.”

“But he killed your parents and is going to kill so many more families…” Granger stared at him in disbelief.

“Well, I doubt that my parents died with the thought of me avenging them in the future, you know,” he snorted indignantly. “And why am I the only one, who should take the responsibility for more deaths to come? If you, guys, haven’t managed to kill that Lord during all these years, then I can’t see how will I make any change. If I were you, I would have waved my white flag long ago.”

“That we did,” Crouch noted. He then stood up and went over to the desk, to see how far had Granger’s progress gone. “Have you found anything useful on muggle drugs?” he asked the girl, still standing with his back turned to her. “His recovery might take twice as much time if we wouldn’t manage to clean his system.”

“I… I think I might have found something!” She instantly jumped up and darted to his side to show him her findings.

“Weasley,” Crouch carried on, “Why are you sitting there – you are not in a theater. Go fetch some food for Potter, he needs protein.”

“Um, yeah, right,” Ron reddened, as he hid his chocolate cover in his pocket. “I’ll get mom’s broth,” he mumbled and disappeared behind the door.

While Granger talked, and she never missed out any details, so her speeches always were very long and very boring, Crouch went back to Harry and placed a tracing charm onto him, under the pretense of checking his temperature. If he read Potter’s personality right, then he was absolutely certain, that the boy would escape at the first opportunity he got. And both Weasley and the mudblood were absolutely useless against the squib, who had been learning his whole life how to survive in hostile environment. Therefore, he made sure, that he could always track Potter down and retrieve him back, should such necessity arise.

“Alright, alright,” he waved his hand at the witch dismissively. “Make a short and a comprehensible version of your research and send it over to Snape – he is the one, who will be brewing potions. And you, Potter, rest as much as possible,” he pointed at Harry with his wand, scowling warningly. “I’m leaving for school, and I will be back tomorrow morning. If anything happens, notify me and Dumbledore immediately.”

And with these words the man disappeared, as if he had never been here at all. Harry kept staring at the empty space, astonished and excited. This was real, he was real and the magic was real, and he was a part of it, even if he couldn’t do all these tricks… He glanced at Granger, who was writing something down, at Weasley, who was levitating a tray with dinner into the room. He was grateful, that these young, nice fellows cared for him, but he wasn’t going to sit around and wait, while he would be once again put into a situation he had no wish to be put into. In other words, Harry couldn’t care less about what these people expected of him – his life belonged to him and he planned on living it on his own terms.

**XXX**

“Well?” The ice cold voice cut through the air, making it vibrate ever so slightly. Used to effects that the Dark Lord had on his surroundings and servants, Crouch kneeled before the warlock, shivering, and held out a vial for him.

“Please, my lord, watch my memories before going to Dumbledore. I have witnessed Potter’s interrogation – they all were truly clueless of his existence.”

“These filthy, muggle-loving scumbags,” Voldemort hissed, snatching the glass container out of his spy’s hand. “Liars, dirty liars, I will repay for their treason, they will never forget this lesson!”

Crouch knew he had to be silent and let his master vent his anger. The impulsive warlock was always very fast to think the worst of everyone, was paranoid in his fear of being tricked and killed again. However, he usually cooled off just as quickly and strived to be rational and realistic in solving the problems at hand.

Voldemort poured the contents of the vial into the large, golden dish and glared at the magical substance, that was swirling lightly in the water. He was betrayed yet again. He was assured, that the Potter’s spawn was gone for good, that the bloody Prophesy was nullified. Placing his trust into the shite-eating muggle-lovers was a bad idea, he knew it, he knew it better than anybody… Fuming and growling under his breath, the Dark Lord bent down and brought his face close to the shiny surface of the basin, allowing it to suck his mind into the whirlpool of memories.

Crouch prepared himself for a long wait. When the warlock was deeply immersed into watching his recollections, he stood up and summoned himself a chair, took out the papers he needed to grade, and set to work. Half an hour later his alarm went off – Potter has escaped from the Order’s headquarters.

“He is good,” the wizard muttered and continued to read his students’ essays. The fact, that the alarm from his school’s office hasn’t gone off yet, meant that both Granger and Weasley were, most probably, asleep. Potter wasn’t an idiot to fight his way out, he, of course, waited until dark and ran, when nobody was watching.

An hour more had passed, before the Dark Lord shrunk back from the pensieve and stumbled to the side, slightly disoriented. He could hardly wrap his usually sharp and bright mind around the idea, that his greatest enemy turned out to be a junkie-squib.

“The scar,” he rasped, as he lowered himself heavily onto his armchair.

“Is genuine, master,” Crouch finished for him. “Undoubtedly caused by a dark curse. There can be no speculation on the matter of his identity. Dumbledore is absolutely certain that this is the Boy-Who-Lived.”

“Dumbledore is an idiot,” Voldemort spat acidly, “I knew I couldn’t rely on his evidence, I should have checked it myself! He is a blind fool, who has no idea how muggle world works, and I so carelessly dismissed his incompetence. The first thing that muggles do, when they look for missing people – they search hospitals and morgues… The boy was in my hands!” He gritted his sharp teeth, seething with rage.

“The boy has already escaped from their headquarters. What would you like me to do, my lord?”

That was a good question. Voldemort didn’t know. Despite what everybody said, he wasn’t convinced, that Potter was a squib. Nobody knew, what had happened that night, when he tried to kill the child – he himself hadn’t the slightest idea, but he highly doubted, that the accident could drain Potter of all of his powers. And now, after all the lies that Dumbledore had fed him, he wasn’t going to blindly believe him again. No, this time he was going to make it all the right way.

“You have placed a tracing charm on him, have you not?” he asked Crouch, rubbing his long, spidery fingers against his dry, cracked lips thoughtfully.

“Yes, of course, master.”

“Give me his current location and go back to Hogwarts. You must be present when they discover his disappearance, and you must follow Dumbledore’s every step. I will take a look at the Potter brat personally,” he rose up, summoning his Invisibility Cloak and throwing it over his shoulders.

“As you wish, my lord,” Crouch bowed respectfully. He produced a map of London, to which his charm was linked. “He is at Albert Road in Richmond.”

Voldemort instantly spotted Potter at the entrance into a club of sorts – he hadn’t been following the development of muggle entrainment industry and therefore he had a vague idea of what young people preferred to do nowadays in their spare time. Judging by the child of the Prophecy, they preferred to load themselves with chemicals, that ruined their bodies and brains. Times changed fast, but people always enjoyed rotting on the inside an on the outside the most.

He went after the thin, still pale and weak after his accident Potter inside. Voldemort had to put a numbing spell onto himself, for the sounds of music were deafening. He couldn’t even call these cacophony a proper melody, but the teenagers were jerking their bodies to it in a manner, that distantly reminded him of dancing. Dismissing the matters of modern tastes, he concentrated solely on his victim.

Potter stopped at the counter and waved at the barman, who, it seemed, knew him well. The man hit his open palm against Potter’s and prepared a drink for him, which the scarred squib downed in one huge gulp. The drink was repeated twice. Voldemort wondered if this time this blind idiot would try to commit suicide by poisoning himself with alcohol. However, Potter seemed to have gained some gracefulness and self-confidence – he strode smoothly towards an older man, who sat on a divan in the corner and watched the youngsters. Without any hesitation Potter kneeled beside him, smiling. They started talking, the boy kept laughing and tucking his long hair behind his ears playfully. The Dark Lord had to admit, that the brat was very charming, he could understand why the man eagerly followed him into the bathroom.

Voldemort didn’t really want to watch Potter being fucked over the toilet, however, he didn’t want to miss any important detail either, therefore he had to patiently wait through the whole ordeal.

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry moaned, spreading his legs wider, as a cock was being pushed inside his arse.

He didn’t know what had gotten into him, but when he ran out of that strange house, having had left both Granger and Weasley snoring at the table, his first impulse was to come to the club and get loaded. And fucked. He cried, while he ran down the streets of London, he cried and tried to convince himself that he needed to go back, or at least return to Allen. But despite what his mind thought, his legs brought him here. He felt hollow, more than ever, he felt that emptiness inside him, and he couldn’t understand why. Hadn’t he found what he was looking for? He found a whole new world for himself, people, who valued him…

But it wasn’t enough. The hungry monster, that parasitized inside him, wanted more, more and more. His greed scared Harry and turned him on at the same time. It seemed as if his hands were tied behind his back and he was fruitlessly trying to free himself – it seemed that as soon as he loses these binds he would be free and his soul would finally be at peace. But this was the only way he knew could set himself free.

“Beg me to fuck you,” the man growled, nailing into him.

“Fuck me, please, please,” Harry obediently moaned, swaying his hips and crying in pain, as the cock ground inside his anus.

“What a dirty, dirty little slut you are,” the man groaned, ecstatic, and hastened his pace. “Dir-ty, lit-tle slu-ut,” he breathed with every harsh blow of his penis into the tight, hot gut.

Voldemort leaned against the tile wall, twirling his magic yew wand in his hands, but his eyes never left Harry’s form. He couldn’t understand why would the boy come here, of all the places, and sell himself, when he was, clearly, in a very bad shape. It seemed he could faint any second – the scar on his stomach was still fresh and reddened, he was still very sick. And yet he left it all for the sake of being fucked in a toilet stall… Perhaps, the drugs had really tempered with his sanity?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Harry cried, as the cock was brutally slammed inside him.

The man groaned loudly and froze, jerking, as he came. He moved to push and pull his throbbing penis in and out of Harry a few more times and finally stumbled away from him, watching the anus gape after being penetrated for so long. His sperm floated out and onto the boy’s sack of balls. The man reached out to collect the drops of his semen with his middle finger and put it back inside, pushing his finger into the stretched entrance. His other hand fished a few banknotes out of his pocket and, having had scrolled them into a tube, pushed the money inside the anus as well.

“Sweet arse, slut,” he barked out a laugh, having had slapped the buttocks a few times, and left, buttoning himself up on his way out.

Voldemort averted his gaze from a most disgraceful display of a young man trying to pull the pounds out of his own rear. The more he thought about it, the less he understood Potter and his motives. Most of all he was surprised to realize, that his own body was turned on by the humiliation, he had just witnessed – that he also couldn’t understand. Perhaps, he had been ignoring his own physical needs for far too long, that even a hyena fucking a rotting corpse could provoke his erection…

Harry shuffled his feet towards the sink, as he fastened his belt. He mindlessly turned on the water and started washing the banknotes, watching them impassively. But he felt tears running down his cheeks. It was a bloody twenty quid – he had let some bastard stuff his arse with his ugly cock and these stupid twenty quid… He felt cheap, used, almost raped, even though he was the one, who initiated the sex in the first place.

“Dirty whore,” he muttered at his own reflection and continued washing the money.

“Oi, Potter! I knew I’d find yer here!” A fat, bald young man barged into the bathroom, smiling and demonstrating his golden teeth.

“Hi, Terrence,” Harry offered him a pathetic parody of a grin, turning the water off and hiding the wet pounds in his pocket. “How are you doing?”

“Perfect, Harry, as always. Listen, are yer up for a shot of good ol’ acid, eh? I have a new kind on me, the spicy one,” Terrence winked at him, coming closer and scratching on his big belly, that hung over the tightly fastened belt. “Oi, why er cryin’, mate? Somebody hurt yer?”

“Nah, it’s fine. I’ve been sick, it’s the fever, I think,” Harry lied, shrugging his shoulders. “Sorry, Terry, I have no money to afford your acid.”

“Poor Harry, such sweet boys like yer shouldn’t cry,” Terrence crooned, patting him on the cheek. “Say, what if I gave yer a few pills for free, eh?”

“Nothing comes for free, especially from you,” Harry sighed, his forced smile faltered. “What do you want me to do?” There he went again. He simply couldn’t refuse a chance to get defiled again.

“I always liked yer, Harry,” the dealer grinned hungrily, stroking the boy’s thin arms. “I always wanted yer to blow me.”

“How many pills will you give me?” He despised Terry, but he really needed a dose. “How about that acid of yours and some LSD?”

“Deal, baby,” Terrence laughed and grabbed on his long hair, to push him down to his knees. “I want yer to make it long and pleasant, take off yer glasses, I like it when yer look like a gurl,” he muttered, as he struggled with his zipper.

Harry hung his spectacles onto the collar of his t-shirt and helped the man to free his small penis from underneath his obese stomach. He sucked on it tenderly, teasing the head with the tip of his tongue and sighing passionately.

“I suspected yer good at it, bird,” Terrance moaned, wrapping the long, raven locks around his palm and squeezing them in his fist. “Yes, yes, suck it.” He moved his hips, to push inside the hot mouth.

Voldemort watched the boy intently. He had this strangest sensation, more like a bout of intuition, that Potter reminded him of someone, or, rather, made him feel the way he hadn’t had been feeling in a very long time. But what exactly it was, he wasn’t able to decipher just yet, it nagged on him somewhere in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. There was definitely something abnormal about Potter, apart from his perverted love for being humiliated.

Harry sucked the cock deep into his mouth, pressing his lips against its hairy base and wheezing harshly, as Terrence held his head in place. Harry fought to recoil, he felt the bile coming up, but he couldn’t. At last, the pressure onto his head subsided and he turned away sharply, coughing and spitting his saliva all around.

“I wanna fuck yer in yer mouth,” Terrence whined, panting heavily and sweating. He forced his cock into Harry’s throat again and held him by his hair, moving back and forth, moaning to the squelching sound, that the wet, swollen mouth produced.

The torture didn’t last long. Soon the man came, wailing like a baby, as he squeezed his reddened penis and ejaculated onto Harry’s outspread tongue.

“Wait, don’t swallow just yet,” he commanded, breathing raggedly, as he took a tiny plastic bag out of his chest pocket – it was filled with grey powder. “I want yer to eat my cum with my acid,” he murmured and poured the drug onto the tongue, mixing it and the semen with his finger.

Harry closed his mouth, trying hard not to taste this foul slime, barely holding back his tears. His lips trembled harshly, as he tried to choke it down his throat to Terrence’s senseless crooning.

“Good boy,” he patted him on the cheeks again, watching him appreciatively. “Now, open yer mouth for your meds, bird.” He placed three small pink pills onto the dirtied tongue, that was dutifully pushed out for him. “Good boy,” he repeated, satisfied.

Voldemort watched Potter sit on the floor and cry silently into his hands, pressed tightly against his lips, as he tried to swallow it all down and not throw up. The dealer had already left, and the boy kept shaking all over in violent sobs, as tears streamed down his cheeks. He doubted he had seen anything more pathetic and strange before in his life.

Harry grabbed onto the sink’s edge and pulled himself up, sobbing loudly. He felt horrible, felt so disgusted with himself, for a second he even wished he died when he stabbed himself. Cold water rushed out of the tap and he bent down to wash his face, that he wanted to scratch, to peel the skin off of – it itched from the amount of dirt and others’ sperm, that had covered it throughout the years of his “serving”. Sniveling, he kept rubbing on it angrily, coughing, as the water accidentally got into his mouth or into his nose.

“Filthy, filthy piece of acid-eating shite!” he wailed into his palms, crying, trembling in hysteria. “Freak, sick, sick freak! Abomination!”

The memories of father Bredfood whipping him in front of the crucifixion on the wall came back to his mind, as the priest’s voice resonated in his ears. Sinner, abomination, a disgrace… Jesus always watched him with such unfair severity from his cross, as if Harry had murdered someone, when he simply refused to do what he was told. He hated that he had to stand naked in front of Jesus and let him see his genitals and his reddened arse, that stung from the belting. He felt ashamed of his sins being exposed like that, of his own body being exposed to such cruelty…

“Poor little Harry,” he murmured, when he gradually calmed down and, having had splashed some more water onto his face, straightened and glanced at his reflection. “Look at you, you will cry your pretty eyes out.” He halted, before placing his spectacles onto his nose – they were stained with semen. “That fat asshole spoiled your glasses, you should clean them before putting on.”

This was even curiouser. They way Potter looked and talked to himself was completely different, alien. Voldemort came closer, stopping right next to him, by the nearest sink. Something had changed, something in the boy had just changed and he couldn’t say what exactly – he simply felt it in his gut, that something was wrong. Was it the drug? Potter had taken a lot, even though the Dark Lord wasn’t versed in muggle chemistry, he realized, that it was a huge dose for such a thin, malnourished and badly injured boy.

“You look so lovely when you cry, sweetheart,” Harry sighed almost lustfully, as he put his glasses on and inspected his face, caressing it gently with his wet palms. “So much humiliation for so little pain,” he shook his head, clicking his tongue chidingly, “Not the best deal, if you ask me.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, young man,” he shook his index finger at his reflection, smiling. Voldemort felt shivers run down his spine at the sight of that expression. It wasn’t Potter, it simply couldn’t be the same boy he had just watched being fucked into his mouth.

“Oh, but I am, I am,” Harry hurriedly agreed in a mockingly childish voice and pouted his lips. “I am a very, very naughty boy. I have been so bad, I haven’t been praying for so long. God must be very angry with me.”

“You are a little whore, aren’t you?” He smiled again, winking at his own reflection. “You like sucking their cocks for money, don’t you? You like being humiliated like that, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes,” he panted, leaning closer to the mirror and breathing against it heavily, “I like it when they treat me like shite. I love it, love it.”

“But why, dear? Aren’t you disgusted with yourself?” His lips stretched into a wild grin.

“I am, but this is what I want. I don’t deserve anything better,” Harry told himself and kissed his reflection, cackling. “I am a piece of white trash, I am the abomination, I am a hole and they all can come inside me, fill me up with their filth... A glorious hole indeed…”

Potter’s laughter grew colder and less human, his face seemed contorted with contradicting expressions of disgust and delight. The Dark Lord was honestly confused by what he was seeing. Either Potter was stark mad or… Or he wasn’t what everybody thought him to be. He didn’t look high to Voldemort, if anything, he looked very sober and very insane.

“Filthy, filthy Harry,” he kept cackling wildly, having had thrown his head back and holding onto his aching scar on his stomach. “You can't even kill yourself, you idiot!” That confession caused yet another bout of uncontrollable laughter, that took on a hysterical tune. “All you can do is regret your own existence.”

Potter suddenly calmed down and stopped laughing and talking altogether. He set his hands against the sides of the sink and stared at himself, so intently, as if he was searching for something in his own face. But then his gaze slowly moved towards the spot, where Voldemort’s reflection would have been, were he not hidden under the Invisibility Cloak. The Dark Lord blinked a few times and took a step back, flinching – Potters eyes followed his movements. It wasn't possible! Even a real wizard wouldn't have been able to see him, let alone a squib.

“I am not alone in here, am I?” Harry smirked, twisting his lips into a sneer. “What’s the fucking difference, anyway…” He winked at the reflection of the stalls and strode out of the toilet, instantly forgetting all about the unexpected invisible witness of his further descent into Hell.

Voldemort pushed the hood of the cloak down, to stare at his own reflection in the mirror. He pulled it back up – his face disappeared. How was it possible that Potter saw him? Sensed him?! Perplexed, the Dark Lord apparated back into his manor and sat down at his desk, burdened with many unpleasant thoughts, torn apart by many contradicting emotions. Anger and fear fought curiosity and sexual excitement. The former were winning, simply because his rational analysis led to a simple conclusion: Potter was a threat, that needed to be eliminated.


	2. Chapter 2

_And if you look at your reflection_   
_Is it all you want it to be?_   
_What if you could look right through the cracks?_   
_Would you find yourself  
_ _Find yourself afraid to see?_

 

Allen was going to return home any minute now and Harry tried to make himself look presentable. He took a shower, hid all of his bloodied and stinking clothes and put an old oversized t-shirt on. He halted at the mirror to inspect the scar on his stomach – it was a real evidence of magic, for it healed so fast, there was almost nothing left of it but a thin reddish line. And he felt no more pain inside…

The key turned in the lock and the familiar grunting filled the narrow hall of their tiny apartment.

“Harry?! You’re back?”

Allen froze at the room’s threshold, staring at his younger friend in surprise and relief. The boy looked unharmed and sober, although terribly pale and weak, but that was nothing out of the ordinary – Harry looked like this his whole life, and Allen doubted any amount of vitamins and good food could make any difference.

“Yeah, my fever didn’t last long and I thought it to be improper to abuse that man’s hospitality any longer, so I thanked him and left,” Harry smiled, shrugging his shoulders and plunging down onto his bed happily.

“So, who is this fella?” Allen asked, taking a seat on his own bed, that stood on the opposite side of their bedroom. “How has he found you?”

“No idea, he said he’s been looking for ages for me. I guess, he just didn’t expect me to be elsewhere in the country, he was certain I stayed in London after my parents’ death,” he lied smoothly. Harry was so excited to share the amazing secret with his only friend and his brother, but he knew, that Allen would never believe him. Allen always said that magic, miracles, aliens and religion were invented in Hollywood, so that there was something to make films about. “His name is Albus – don’t ask – and he is a headmaster at some school for… special children.”

“Special?” His friend raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Yeah, you know, the ones that that program on telly was about? The ones that are dumb and slow, but in fact they are like genius, they are super good at math or something like that.”

“Oh, I see. So what were you talkin’ about for so long?” Allen visibly relaxed and stood up to undress and unpack the food, that he brought from the supermarket. “Go on, I’m listenin’.”

“Well…” Harry lifted his legs up and pressed his bent knees against his chest, hugging himself, as he tried to think of what to say. They haven’t talked that much, Dumbledore kept asking him those questions… And he haven’t even thought to ask about his parents, what were they like, to at least ask for a photograph… He never knew what they looked like. “He wanted to know how I lived all these years, he was shocked to hear of everything, that’s happened…”

“Where has he been all this time?” Allen asked louder, as he went to the bathroom to brush his teeth before bed.

“I asked him the same. He said he was the one who had to leave me with the Dursleys, he had to go away due to some serious problems… And then, after I was moved to Manchester, he lost my track.”

Harry listened in to the sound of water rushing down from the shower and involuntarily thought back on his night at the club. His insides churned slightly at the disgusting memories, but somehow he felt satisfied. He felt fulfilled. There was this odd indecipherable darkness inside him, that monster he had told those wizards about – it loved when he humiliated himself, it all but purred in pleasure in his chest every time he fell lower and lower…

“It still seems very strange to me… Although, they keep tellin’ these stories on telly, about people findin’ their friends and relatives even after fifty years of separation… I guess, everythin’s possible,” Allen mused out loud, as he came back into the room several minutes later, wet and naked, with a small towel hanging loosely on his hips. He glanced at Harry and scowled. “Harry, I know you’re home and we’re practically brothers, but that doesn’t mean you can sit like that and flash your cock and balls for all the world to see. Put somethin’ on for heaven’s sake!”

“Sorry,” Harry snorted, lowering his legs and hiding his genitals out of other’s view.

His eyes roamed over the man’s body and not for the first time he wondered what could it feel like to fuck with Allen. Harry loved him, he knew it, it was not a passionate and romantic kind of feeling, more like a grateful faithful adoration – he was a dog, that adored its master for being there, for scratching on its belly and for giving it food. It was a pathetic kind of love, and Harry felt diminished by it. But he would have never refused his friend, were he to try and make their relationship physical.

“Anyway, it’s good you’re back. I thought my hands would fall off yesterday – the pub was crammed! I’m tellin’ you, if we put up a telly, like our boss wants, they will tear us apart…”

Allen demonstratively turned his back on Harry and took the towel off to rub the water off of his pelvis. And jerked, when suddenly a body was pressed against his from behind and he felt Harry’s soft penis brush against his buttocks.

“Harry, what the fuck are you doin’?” he growled, when the thin hands snaked their way around his chest and the warm palms rested on his muscled breasts to caress the nipples.

“Don’t you want to fuck me, Al?” Harry whispered, kissing the broad, strong shoulders. Whatever devil has gotten inside him – there was no turning back. “I love looking at your body. You’re so strong, so big… I wish you could take me,” he murmured suggestively and slid one of his hands down towards the base of the meaty cock, hidden underneath the bush of rough, curly hairs.

“Stop this instant, Harry,” Allen hissed, trembling all over in anger. “I don’t want to hit you, so I’m askin’ you to stop before I hurt you.”

But Harry didn’t want to stop. He stroke the penis up and down its length and moaned seductively into the man’s ear, rubbing against his arse. “I want you, Al, I want you so bad…” He sharply moved forward, fell on his knees and took the cock into this mouth.

“No, no!” Allen tried to push him away, blushing fiercely as his own body betrayed him. He hated poofs, he couldn’t stand the mere thought of men fucking each other, and he had even once beaten Harry for whoring himself around, but… But he was stone hard and hot, burning in his abdomen, and Harry… He just had to be so good at it. “No!” He finally pulled himself together and slapped the boy on the face. “Get away from me!”

Harry pressed his palm to his stinging cheek and looked up at his friend, smiling. Allen expected anything, but this. He stared at the boy in confusion – why would he smile, when he has just hit him?

“I know you want me, Allen,” Harry murmured and turned around to spread his legs and show his arse off. “There is nothing wrong about fucking me. It won’t make you queer, but it will make you so much happier,” he chuckled, stroking his own penis and balls, looking back over his shoulder and licking his lips teasingly. “Don’t you want to put your big fat cock into this tiny hole?” His middle finger penetrated the small entrance and he groaned lecherously, swaying his hips.

“You’re sick, Harry, absolutely sick,” Allen bit out, staring at the finger and feeling how his stomach did little loops in obvious excitement.

What happened next was the most humiliating and inexplainable experience in his whole life. Used to protecting and loving Harry like an older brother would, he rarely looked at him as an adult but a boy, who needed guidance. But now he saw a man, standing on his fours in front of him and begging to be fucked. Why hadn’t he noticed this change, why wasn’t he there to stop Harry from becoming this… Allen’s hand reached for his throbbing cock and he kneeled behind Harry, spitting on his buttocks.

“Yeah!” Harry’s body jerked and recoiled from a painful penetration, but he pushed back just as hard, to help the flesh move deeper inside him. The walls of his anus burned and hurt, forced to stretch so quickly, and he hissed under his breath, but this was exactly what he loved about sex. The pain. “Fuck, me, fuck me, Allen! I want you…”

There was no difference, it was just like banging a girl’s arse – this was what frightened and excited Allen the most and kept him going, as he mended his pace, panting and pushing his hips harshly. Harry moaned, whined and squirmed in his hold, begging him for more, and it felt just as good as it felt with women. And felt terribly, terribly wrong. Allen came suddenly and fell back, spraying his semen all over himself.

“Get away from me!” he roared at Harry and hurried to crawl away from him. “You bastard, bloody whore!”

Harry dropped his hand down, leaving his flaccid cock to throb ever so slightly, and sighed in disappointment, sniffing quietly. He looked back at Allen with eyes full of unshed tears.

“I am a whore, Al. I’m sorry, but I can’t change myself… No matter how much I despise it, I can’t… I simply can’t,” he whined and pressed his face into the sheets of the bed, shaking in harsh sobs.

It all finally got to him. The mysterious wizarding people and his own newly acquired identity, his stabbing accident, the drugs, the night at the club and the sex in exchange for a bloody doze, a whole day spent on the streets, in a gutter, where he cried himself to sleep only to wake up to a horrible stench of his own shit… He was slowly breaking apart and there was no magic and no potion in this whole goddamn world to fix him. Harry wept from the pain he intentionally brought upon himself, from the embarrassment that he sought with such an enviable devotion.

“It wasn’t enough for you, that you hated yourself – you just had to take me with you?!” Allen spat, glaring at the boy’s buttocks, that were wet and sleek, slightly reddened, covered in tiny bids of sweat and his sperm. The sight made him turn away in shame of his own actions, though, inwardly he understood that he wasn’t ashamed of fucking Harry, but of enjoying it… “Well, why are you cryin’ now? It’s all your bloody fault! Get the fuck up and get the fuck out!” He stood up shakily and darted into the bathroom, locked the door behind himself and sat down onto the toilet, tugging on his own hair helplessly. He wasn’t a fairy, he wasn’t! It was all Harry’s fault.

Harry didn’t answer. He cried and cried, fisting his hands into the covers and pouring his tears onto the sheets on which Allen slept and masturbated. How long had he dreamed of lying here next to him – he just had to ruin everything now… Of course, Harry hated himself, he loathed his pathetic existence and more often than not he wished he was never born. Filth, abomination, a poof and a slut – he was everything most despicable combined, the quintessence of the misery of the lowest of a human kind. But he was also a coward, and that was the only reason why he had never even tried to kill himself in his sane, sober mind. Harry feared death, even though he knew he was knocking on its door…

“I love you, Allen,” he mumbled, having had ceased his weeping. He crawled towards the shut door and pressed his face against its dusty surface. “I love you. I want to be with you and to love you, to care for you…”

“Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?!” A low growling came from behind the door, and Harry jerked away from it, when a hard blow made it shake and groan on its hinges. “I said get the fuck out of here! I don’t want to see your whoring face or your arse!”

His lips trembled harshly and he sobbed again, hiding his face in his sweated palms. A beaten dog, shouted at by its master. Self pity and self hatred fought in his soul, as he hastily searched for his spectacles and a clean pair of jeans. Harry felt suffocated again, he couldn’t stay here any longer, even if Allen hadn’t sent him away… He was anxious and he was scared, he felt cornered by his own lust, his own impotence and the responsibilities he had to face in both his real life and in the world of magic, that he was still finding hard to believe in, yet… Yet he believed… Harry ran out into the street, shivering under the showering rain and squinting into the darkness, that was quickly descending onto the cold autumn city. Where was he to go now?

What a perfect way to spend one’s weekend, Allen thought grimly – he was still sitting on the toilet, naked, still half-hard and enraged. He dearly wished to have a quick wank to relief himself of this frustration, that grated on his nerves, but the mere thought of stroking his cock, that had recently been in another man’s arse made him sick to the stomach… The front door creaked open again and he smacked his lips, twisting his mouth in a disgusted smirk. It was just like Harry to mess up and run away, only to come crawling back later and beg for forgiveness.

Allen knew, that he was supposed to be the smart and the reasonable one in their tandem, but he stubbornly refused to admit his own fault, his own weakness. He wanted Harry to take all the blame upon himself, simply because he was tired of cleaning up after him. And the fact that he fucked him out of his own will was the last straw for Allen – he swore he would beat Harry up again, and he would not go easy on him this time. He was sick and tired of protecting a child, who was worse than a parasite, who sat on his neck and fed on his blood, being an absolutely useless excuse of a man, who had the audacity to make him into a fairy.

“What, you came to beg me to forgive you? Again?” he shouted venomously, hearing light, soft footsteps on the other side of the door. “You’re pathetic piece of white trash, Harry! Go fuck yourself, filthy nancy!” However, Harry was uncharacteristically silent. “That’s right, you should be ashamed of yourself, you stupid fuck!”

The old, tattered golden handle turned a few times, and Allen rolled his eyes in exasperation – it was just like Harry to dumbly try to open the door that was obviously locked.

“It’s locked, you blind asshole!” he barked, laughing mirthlessly.

He could even imagine what did the boy look like now to the very last detail, with an outmost clarity – he had seen it so often, he knew it by heart. His pale, girly face would be all worn and sullen, stained with tears and snot, his plump lips would be swollen as would be his running nose, and his glasses would be all wet and foggy; Harry would be shaking all over and his thin, trembling hands would be clutching on his baggy shirt, while he would be whining and mumbling like a retarded piece of shit that he was… Allen hated to admit it even to himself, but he loved seeing Harry like that. He loved it when his friend suffered and cried, even though the tears and the hysterics always irritated him, but he loved to be in control, loved to be the one to forgive and to pet the crying boy, who practically licked on his hands and feet. He even felt turned on by the prospect of listening to the endless pleas and empty promises that were never meant to be kept…

The lock turned on its own accord to Allen’s astonishment, and the door flung open. A tall, dark figure stood behind it. It was definitely not Harry.

“Who the fuck are you?!” he shouted, affronted, and sprang up on his feet, involuntarily balling his fists. Only then he saw, that the intruder had company – another dark, hooded figure stood by Harry’s bed, going through his things in the drawers of his small wardrobe. “Oi, the fuck do you think you’re doin’ eh?!”

“Are you Allen – Potter’s flatmate?” The man, who opened the door, asked in a low, raspy voice. His stern face looked bereft of any kind of emotion, and his eyes were hard and empty, almost lifeless. Allen couldn’t help but shudder, feeling suddenly very cold, as if the room’s temperature had dropped dramatically.

“Maybe. Who’s askin’?” But then his anger came back to him, when he heard Harry’s last name and he crossed his arms over his chest defiantly. “What has this moron done again? Does he owe you money? Is it his bloody drugs again?”

The stranger looked him over with what seemed to be mocking skepticism. “Are you aware of the fact, that your partner sells himself for money in public toilets?” He arched an inquiring eyebrow, when his accessing gaze reached Allen’s cock, hanging rigidly between his thighs.

“Who cares what he knows or knows not, Barty. I have no wish to be let into any more details of Potter’s sex life.” A hollow, exhausted sigh distracted Allen from reddening and retorting in a rudest way possible.

He stared at the second unwanted guest, who finally let go of Harry’s belongings and turned to come closer. Allen gasped and stumbled back, barely suppressing a shriek of disgust, that threatened to burst out of his throat – he had never seen anything so ugly before. The thing could hardly be called a human at all, although it breathed and talked and even seemed to be male… Its face was distorted and badly injured, the rotting flesh was covered in scales of different sizes, that glistened dimly under the light, that fell from the bathroom’s lamp. There was no nose, no lips on this face – the horridly maimed slits of skin were moving in their stead. Only the eyes remained to be human, although their irises bore an unnaturally bright red colour, as if alight, glowing menacingly, disturbingly.

“Wh-what the fuck is this, who are you?!” Allen shouted. His ankles pressed against the edge of the bathtub and he fell back, grabbing blindly on the curtain to not hit his head against the tiled wall.

“It is obvious he is Potter’s fuck-friend, you can still smell the stench of coitus in the air,” the creature continued, completely ignoring Allen and his distress, clearly used to such reaction.

“It looks like Potter never told him about his secret,” the other man nodded slightly in agreement. “Do you really need to legilimize him, master? I doubt you could find anything useful in that empty head of his.”

“He and Potter grew up together, therefore, I will look for any indications of magic in his memories – even if Potter is a squib, which is highly doubtful, he must have had at least a few encounters with magical powers, that would explain his survival.” The red eyes finally concentrated on Allen’s naked form and the slit of a mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. “Come here, I have no wish to touch your filthy body.”

“What…” Allen kept staring at him in terror and confusion. He couldn’t understand a thing of what they were saying and what did Harry have to do with all these nonsense.

“I said. Come. Here.”

The creature hissed icily, and Allen couldn’t help it, his body was practically shoved forward against his will and he awkwardly stumbled onto the floor, kneeling at the naked feet of the monster – a pair of surprisingly normal, human feet, if only blue from the cold and slightly scaled above the toes… Trembling, he looked up, instantly cowering under a heavy gaze of the red eyes, that looked with such overwhelming hatred, his insides were churning and were ready to fall out through his mouth.

“Hold your head up for the Dark Lord to legilimize you,” the other man growled and grabbed him on the hair, to pull him harshly up and hold him at his arm’s length right in front of the monster’s ugly snout.

Allen wanted to protest, to scream, to fight two visibly weak and worn out men, if their sullen, unhealthy looking faces were anything to judge by, but his limbs were not obeying him, nor was his tongue. He could only wheeze helplessly, staring at them both with eyes open wide, so wide he felt they were going to burst out of their sockets.

With another long, heavy sigh of a man, burdened with too many great responsibilities, the creature leaned a little bit closer and narrowed its red eyes, and Allen could not for the life of him avert his own. A dull, searing pain blinded him, it felt as if his skull has just been crushed open, and with a sharp intake of air he finally screamed on the verge of his constricted lungs.

**XXX**

Wind kept hurling dry leaves into his face, while Harry watched the first rays of sun creep through the gaps in between the houses. The rain showered until the very morning and only now did it turn into an irritating drizzle, that prickled on the skin in a most unpleasant way. With nowhere to go and no money to waste, Harry had to spend the night at the park, where he had, of course, frozen himself to death. Shuddering in cold, chattering his teeth and breathing harshly, he rushed home, hoping against hope, that Allen has cooled off already and would at least let him in. Harry thought it was a huge progress, that he didn’t go to the club again, and thought that Allen should also see it as a positive sign, should see reason, should understand him. After all, he behaved well…

However, when Harry saw police cars parked at the porch of the building, all of his arrogance and anger disappeared immediately. Running towards the doors, pushing the random spectators out of his way, he prayed – prayed to god, that he didn’t believe in – that Allen has simply beaten somebody up to vent his anger, and was being interrogated now, that nothing has happened… Not because of him. Please, not because of him. He flew up the stairs, panting sharply, and collided with Dumbledore himself.

“What… Are you doing here?” he managed to rasp, fruitlessly trying to look over the old man’s shoulder and into the open door. There were criminologists inside. Why were criminologists in their apartment?! His subconsciousness already knew the answer, but he refused to accept it.

“Harry, don’t go in there,” Dumbledore commanded in a low, grave voice, holding him by the shoulders. “Let the muggle police finish their business. Tell me where have you been, why have you ran? I have warned you about the dang-”

“No, no,” Harry shook his head, not really knowing what was he denying, for his throat was clogged and he felt bile rising up inside it. His lips went numb as did his tongue and he just stood there, shaking his head and mumbling, “No, no…”

“Harry,” the wizard stirred him up, to gain his attention. “Harry, listen to me, this is very important. Where have you been?”

“No, I… No, Allen…” Harry recoiled away from him, grimacing and gaging.

“Potter!” Doyle came out of the apartment, brushing past Dumbledore, as if he was invisible. “Here you are! You came right on time to make it all easy for me. Stretch your hands out, you are under arrest for the murder of Allen Bale.”

“What?! No! Allen!” Harry wheezed barely audibly, staring at the moustached policeman in horror.

“I warned you, Potter, I warned you time and again to quit using that shit. Now you killed a man!” Doyle snarled, producing a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket, but he froze all of a sudden. Turned around ungracefully, like a puppet doll, and, having had jerked his head, went down the stairs without any other sound.

“Harry, I know you didn’t do it,” Dumbledore came up to him again, hiding his magic wand in his sleeve. “But you must tell me where you went, whom you’ve met, because nobody knew you are alive and in London, nobody knew of your address apart from me, I never shared it even with the members of the Order…”

“Allen, Allen,” Harry tore himself out of the man’s grasp and ran into the apartment, sobbing hysterically at the sight of bloody spots on the floor. Their trail led straight into the bathroom, where he had left his friend. “Oh, god!” He pressed his palms against his mouth, wailing into them, unable to make himself take another step.

“Potter, you shouldn’t be here,” Crouch appeared at the bathroom’s threshold, and the criminologists all stood up, as if on cue, and silently left, looking hypnotized, just like Doyle did. “This is a mess, you don’t need to see this.”

“Why?” It was stupid to ask that, he knew the answer, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask anything else. All of his thoughts were in a disarray, nothing seemed to make any sense anymore. How could Allen die? How could somebody kill him, if they had been talking just recently, several hours ago?

“Potter, get out,” Crouch said dryly, impassively.

His lack of emotions made it all the more horrifying, Harry couldn’t stand how unaffected and composed the man was. It was a bad sign, it meant that everything was even worse than he dared to imagine. Summoning all of his will and courage, Harry moved forward, looking at the wizard both pleadingly and desperately. Strong hands stopped him, pressing onto his weak chest, but he struggled against them, he couldn’t surrender and let them hide the truth from him, he couldn’t.

For some reason once white tiles were now dirty red in colour. Harry couldn’t recognize their bathroom. All of its walls were covered in blood - it was still running down, dripping softly onto the floor and the small old rug. It squelched underneath his weight, pooling more blood around itself, when Harry stepped closer to the bathtub. It couldn’t be Allen, could it? Could this deformed pile of insides and flesh be his friend? Why are these guts hanging up instead of their shower curtain? Hyperventilating, he drew his head back into his shoulders, stumbling away from the stinking mass of meat, his hand blindly felt for the edge of a sink, but slipped against its wet, bloodied surface and Harry fell back into Crouch’s arms. He instantly threw up all over himself, coughing up bile and snot.

“Why don’t you ever listen,” the wizard clicked his tongue in annoyance and pulled him up, simultaneously cleaning the vomit with a simple spell. “Have you had enough?” At Harry’s weak protest, he growled under his breath and forcibly pushed the boy out of the bathroom and onto his bed, shutting the door close behind himself.

“It can’t be Allen, it can’t be him!” Harry whined, twisting his fingers and rocking his body, perched on the edge of his mattress.

“Policemen asked the neighbours, it was reported that you and Allen had a fight and you ran away,” Crouch told him nonchalantly, standing on guard between him and the bathroom. “About an hour later they heard him scream, like they’ve never had before. However, it was very short and nothing followed. At last, in the morning, when your landlady realized that you were not coming home, she went up the stairs to check on Allen. She found the door to be open and this,” he waved his hand in the direction of the crime scene.

“We all know you are innocent, Harry,” Dumbledore said again, as he came to stand next to the wizard and watch the boy sorrowfully. “Muggles, of course, think you are the murderer, since you have a record for drugs abuse and since you were the last one to see Allen alive and to fight with him. However, this should not be your concern, we will deal with this problem later. What we need to worry about now, is how exactly has Voldemort managed to find you.”

Harry didn’t listen to whatever the old man was saying, he couldn’t care less that some wizarding freak had found his home address. The only thing that bothered him now, was the fact that he would never see Allen again, that he would never be able to ask his forgiveness, to amend his mistake… He would never see his friend smile at him and shake his head condescendingly, would never hear him berate and scold him for yet another fuck up…

“It’s all my fault!” he wailed and pressed his hands to his wet face, sobbing harshly. “I should have never done that, should have never left him all alone!”

“Potter!” Crouch snapped, irritated by the boy’s soppiness and childishness. “Pull yourself together, for Merlin’s sake!”

“Now, now, Barty,” Dumbledore placated him, “Harry is grieving, have some compassion.” He gently took the young man under his arm and pulled him up to stand on wobbly legs. “I will take you to our headquarters now, Harry. You must not be alone.”

Once again he was sucked into the tube of air and lights, only this time Harry barely noticed it at all, and was looking around apathetically, when he once again returned to the dark, well furnished room and was seated on the very same sofa. It seemed as if ages had passed since he left this place…

He sat with his face hidden in his hands and didn’t move, listening numbly to the low buzz of several voices discussing him in the next room. He didn’t pay any heed to the words, didn’t register them at all. The blood, the flesh and the insides were standing in front of his eyes. Harry didn’t feel sickened anymore, he felt… Hollow. Cold and bereft of the last sparkles of light that he used to crave so much. Nothing was there on the other side of the tunnel, nothing awaited him in his future, that he feared so much. Just like he had told Allen – living alone was terribly hard for him, being an adult was a curse. When he was a child, all the abuse, all the grief and misfortune could be explained, could be justified, could be blamed on somebody else. And now…

Now he was ought to take responsibility and admit his own mistakes, admit his own guilt. His unhappiness was his own doing, Harry knew that and didn’t try to change it – he thought this to be Allen’s job. He was so dependent on a man, who was a mere pile of meat and bones now, it seemed ridiculous now, pathetic. How could he have expected Allen to be there for him forever, to aways save his sorry arse and to always let him on the threshold even after he’d seriously messed up? Well, this time he went out of his league, he had outdone himself this time… And Allen paid for it.

“Drink this.”

He sensed warmth next to his left hand and looked up, tucking his long disheveled hair behind his ears. Crouch stood in front of him, holding a cup of steaming tea on a small saucer and watching him impassively.

“How do you stay so composed all the time?” Harry croaked weakly, taking the cup gratefully and sipping on the hot drink, sighing silently in relief. Heat spread through his body in a matter of seconds and he felt alive again.

“Habit,” the man replied simply and took a seat next to him. “I used to be an Auror before I was invited to teach Defense at Hogwarts. I was a wizarding policeman,” he explained, when the boy shrugged his shoulders and shook his head at the unknown word.

“Do you know who killed him?”

Only now he realized he had no idea whatsoever who could have done such a horrible, horrible thing. Harry had seen several films and TV programs about serial killers, who mutilated their victims to the point when they became unrecognizable, but he never imagined something like this could happen to him, to his family. Who could, in his sane mind, turn a human being into something so inhuman?

“The Dark Lord Voldemort, or one of his followers, it is hard to say who exactly,” Crouch replied lowly, watching the boy’s trembling hands, that were gripping the saucer so tightly, the knuckles on his fingers turned white.

“How do you know it was him? Why not a… What did you call it… Muggle?”

“Because he left his mark behind. You came too late, we have already removed it from the sky by that time, so that muggles couldn’t notice it. The Dark Lord and his servants always leave this so called Dark Mark at the scenes of their crimes. What we are trying to establish now, is how has he managed to find you.”

“I don’t know… I don’t know…” Harry sighed, exhausted, and rubbed on his eyes with one of his hands, shuddering at the sharp pain, that was once again building up in his forehead, in his damned scar. His fingers felt wetness – it was bleeding again. Scowling at the blood on his skin, he angrily rubbed it off and onto his jeans. “What, was I supposed to recognize him even if I saw him?”

“You wouldn’t have seen him, Harry,” Dumbledore answered his question, coming soundlessly into the room. “However, it would help us if you told us exactly where and at what time did you go?”

“I don’t remember, I was on drugs again,” Harry grimaced at the old man, laughing bitterly. “I went to the club, bought acid and LSD, loaded myself and then I blacked out. I woke up lying in a gutter at the docks and I hurried to get home. Allen wasn’t there yet, so I took a shower, put clean clothes on… He came back, we fought, I ran away and spent the night at the park… Then I… Found you in our house,” he trailed off, lowering his eyes and concentrating on a teacup. He could feel tears burn on his eyes again, felt them forcing their way out, and he stubbornly tried to hold them back.

Dumbledore sighed heavily in reply and lowered himself onto a chair to take a long, careful look at Harry, before speaking again. “Alright, Harry, I am not going to ask about drugs anymore, it is obvious that you are truly addicted and we can help you with medical means only… But why have you fought Allen?”

“This is… Personal,” Harry bit out, wincing, as a lonely tear dropped right into his tea.

“What did you tell him about professor Dumbledore and you being absent for a day?” Crouch asked, passing him a small handkerchief with capital B and C embroidered in its corner.

“Nothing. I told him that I met a friend of my parents, that we talked, I had a fever and I stayed the night, left after I felt better.”

“Voldemort must have followed you from the city…” Dumbledore mused out loud, furrowing his brow ever so slightly, as he kept pondering over the problem. “But how has he found out about you…”

“Fudge is too scared of him, Albus. He could have easily broken his word to you and ran to the Dark Lord as soon as you left him at the Ministry,” Crouch muttered with evident disgust, aimed at the useless politician.

“You can’t blame Cornelius for being afraid of Voldemort,” the old wizard told him softly and sighed again. “But I sincerely hoped he would hold back on delivering information… But even if he had told about Harry being alive, he couldn’t tell where to find him – he doesn’t know where our headquarters are situated, he doesn’t know Harry’s address in London, since I had to obliviate poor Percy, after he had obtained it for me. We are missing something.”

“Whatever it is, there is no going back now,” the younger wizard stood up to pace the room. “The Dark Lord knows and he plans to kill Potter sooner or later – he demonstrated his views on the matter quite clearly, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Then I must meet him and make him see reason,” Dumbledore nodded his head grimly. “He must know that Harry is a squib and is harmless. We wouldn’t put you in danger, Harry, prophecy was meant for a wizarding child, who is capable of withstanding great magic,” he told the boy sadly. “And since you are vulnerable, defenseless and have no powers of your own, there is no point in seeing you as the Child of the Prophecy anymore. You did what you could the first time, and now you deserve to have a better life amongst wizards.”

“Why did he kill Allen? Couldn’t he just leave his dark mark or whatever it is? Allen is not a wizard, he doesn’t even believe in miracles, why kill him…”

Harry, of course, knew the answer, but he dearly wished to be told otherwise. It was obvious, that this Lord wanted him dead and killed his only family to simply make him suffer for being the supposed superhero. The fact that somebody killed Allen because of him made Harry hate himself even more so.

“He is ruthless, Harry,” the headmaster replied quietly. “He kills to terrorize the community, to terrorize his enemies. He kills to wound us and to weaken us, for he has no human emotions left in him, he doesn’t know love, affection, regret, longing and happiness – all these are foreign to him, unwanted and despised by him. But he is a very intelligent, cunning man even in his insanity – he uses our own emotions against us, he turns our strengths into our weaknesses.”

“And even if I was a wizard – how was I supposed to fight somebody like him?!”

The cup almost fell off of the saucer, but Harry managed to catch it. Anger for losing Allen was battling suffocating fear inside him, and his guts were once again tied into a tight knot.

“That I do not know, my boy,” Dumbledore smiled at him wanly. “If Dursleys never died, if you were not a squib, you would have come to study at Hogwarts and then we would have certainly found out what is there, that is so special about you. And by this time you would have been a well trained, powerful wizard, capable of dueling somebody like Voldemort… I would have taken you into the school even despite you being a squib,” he added after a short pause, looking at the boy warmly. “To simply protect you and help you build your life in our world – your world. But alas…”

“But what do I do now? I have nowhere to go, Allen’s dead and I’m… All alone.” Harry finally said it, he finally admitted it aloud and tears burst out of his eyes against his weak attempts to fight them. He hastily pressed the handkerchief to his face and sobbed into it, ashamed of his superfluous sensitivity.

“Oh, but you are not alone, my boy,” Dumbledore took him by the hand, putting the cup away, and squeezed it in his both old, wrinkled hands in reassurance. “You have us, we will never leave you again. You may stay here, in our headquarters, and I will arrange for a safe house for you, some place unknown to Voldemort and his servants…”

“We will have to give him drugs, Albus, you do understand that, don’t you?” Crouch spoke, coming closer and looking at Harry impassively. “Otherwise he will run away again. He is an addict and he needs his doses to stay… cooperative.”

“But this is preposterous, Barty, we can’t possibly let him use these horrible chemicals,” the old wizard stared at his colleague in anxious anger. “Harry is terribly sick, he needs medical help!”

“I talked to Severus about this,” Barty lifted his shoulders up indifferently, indicating that it wasn’t his idea. “Based on everything, that Granger researched, he said that Potter needs to be given potions, that have the same effect the muggle drugs have. The doses would be accompanied by healing and restorative potions, and gradually reduced to the point, when Potter would realize that he doesn’t want them anymore.”

“And how long would it take?” Dumbledore inquired tiredly, closing his eyes in resentment.

“Hard to say. Severus says, that if Potter did only light drugs, never abused heavy ones, like cocaine or heroin or opium, then it might take three or four months to completely cure him.”

“But what if I don’t want to quit drugs?” Harry asked suddenly, tearing his hand out of the old man’s hold and looking defiantly between the two men. “I need them, because they make me forget...”

“The potions will have the same effect on you, Potter, but they won’t destroy your body and your mind,” Crouch cut him off sternly. “Don’t you understand, that the drugs don’t make the pain go away – they teach your brain to stop reacting to pain properly. And you would try to ingest more drugs with time, to make the effect stronger, and then you would die, because you wouldn’t even feel the pain of a heart attack!”

“Harry,” Dumbledore addressed him in a placating, kind voice, “Please understand, that we want you to live, we want you to see, that life is not as terrible as you find it. You had to go through a horrible crucible and I wish so much that everything could have turned out differently for you… Harry, you deserve to live, you deserve a better life.”

“But what does it matter if I die from drugs or that Lord of yours kills me?” he asked whimsically, though inwardly he felt awfully sad. Somebody was trying to help him, for the first time in his life, somebody wanted to give him more, than he could ask for. More than he deserved.

“I will do my best to make Voldemort see reason, Harry, I promise,” the headmaster told him seriously. “If he will be adamant in his decision, then I will hide you, I will find a way to save you from him and let you have the life of a Potter in a magical world.” With that he rose up from his seat and strode towards the door, signing for Barty to come closer. “I am going to find Severus and pass a message through him to Voldemort. I will also send Hermione and Ronald here to watch over Harry. Please, Barty, stay with him for a while.”

“Of course,” Crouch bowed his head and saw the wizard out.

He then returned to the room and stopped at the threshold, leaning against the doorframe and watching the boy thoughtfully.

“I won’t run away again,” Harry said barely audibly, rubbing on his stinging eyes and running nose. “I have no strength to go anywhere anyway.”

“I know you won’t. You’re not an idiot.” He came closer and placed a hand onto his shoulder. “You need to sleep it off, Potter. You are breaking apart and the results may turn out very ugly. So, sleep.”

And before Harry could voice his protests, something touched him briefly on his chest and his eyelids became unbearably heavy. They shut on their own accord and his body floated down onto the soft pillows, as his mind finally let go of everything in favour of having so long desired rest.

**XXX**

Voldemort slowly walked through the trees of the Forbidden Forest, approaching the clearing by the small creak, where Dumbledore appointed their meeting. He didn’t want to accept the offer at first, but after he watched Crouch’s memory of Potter being taken into the headquarters again and after he had reconsidered everything he had learned and seen about the boy, he decided he would listen to what the old goat had to say. Dumbledore was very good at hiding things from him, and least of all he wanted to waste his time and energy on seeking the boy out again. No, this time, he swore, he wouldn’t make another mistake, wouldn’t let the old wizard trick him. This time he would do everything right.

He carefully stepped out of the shadows, surveying the territory – he wouldn’t put it past the old coot to bring his dogs to catch him into a trap. However, everything seemed to be clear, only Dumbledore stood by the stream and watched the water float hurriedly down and into the Black Lake.

“Say what you have to say and be quick about it,” Voldemort hissed quietly, pinning the man with a hateful glare.

“Evening, Tom,” Dumbledore tried to squeeze a smile out of himself, but it was a difficult task, since warlock’s gaze was terrifyingly unnerving. “I simply came here to plead for Harry Potter’s life – the boy is a squib and he is no threat to you, nor is he any use to me.”

“What is your evidence, that he does not possess magic, hm?” he sneered in reply. “Last time you were also quite confident of what you thought to be true – and just look at how it has turned out in the end… I need a concrete proof. But since you’ve proven to be the least trustworthy person in this world, I suppose that killing the poor bastard would be much more efficient.”

“Harry had a very hard life, Tom, he doesn’t deserve this.”

“Oh, don’t you dare tell me about his hard life, when you so easily overlooked my own torment when I was under your care!” Voldemort gritted out venomously, narrowing his eyes and involuntarily taking a few threatening steps forward, as his fingers tightened their grip on his wand. “Everyone deserves to suffer, everyone!”

“This is your pain and self-hatred speaking, my boy,” Dumbledore murmured, shaking his head condescendingly. “If only you could find compassion in your heart for the innocent child…”

“Wasn’t I innocent?” he retorted bitterly. This childish hurt irritated Voldemort, but he felt wronged and insulted, and he couldn’t fight these emotions, that only worsened his spite and rage, hatred. He knew he must have behaved very immaturely, but there was just so much pain that he had to bear with, that it was impossible to control himself anymore.

“But I never made you commit your crimes, Tom,” the old wizard noted reasonably. “Nor did I ever make Harry take drugs and destroy his own health.”

“Oh, please, you really expect me to take pity on him? I know all about little Potter, I’ve read the mind of his so called mate, I have seen all of their shared past,” Voldemort spat. “And I couldn’t feel more satisfied with what that prat had to go through. But it is not enough, old man, not enough! Eye for an eye! I died because of him, and now is his turn!”

“I don’t know how you did it, but you didn’t die. You can’t possibly blame a child, whom you have personally chosen, Tom. Remember, that there were two of them, and I never knew which one of them was meant in the Prophecy – you marked Harry, not I,” Dumbledore said sternly, raising his index finer to emphasize his point. Seeing how enraged and unstable the dark wizard was, the headmaster sighed and added softly, “Tom, I beg you to spare his life.”

That was exactly why he didn’t believe Potter to be a squib. If it was his destiny to choose this particular child as his own enemy, then the said child must possess great power, must be very special, otherwise, what was the whole point of the Prophecy in the first place? One of them couldn’t live, while the other survived – the message was quite clear to the Dark Lord.

“Want me to help you amend your own sins?” Voldemort stretched his lipless mouth in an ugly parody of a smile and stepped closer. “Kneel, old man. Kneel and beg me, like these pitiful wizard do, when I come to kill them.”

Dumbledore hesitated. “I know you only wish to humiliate me, while I am trying to have a civil conversation with you, trying to find a compromise.”

“Oh, so you want a compromise?” he laughed coldly, swaying his long, forked tongue, that peeked out just a little bit. “Kill him in my stead – that way your beloved spawn of Potters wouldn’t suffer anymore. I certainly would torture him to death.”

“But there must be something you would consider exchanging for Harry’s life,” the old wizard tried, hopelessly staring at the Dark Lord with wide, wet eyes.

“My, such nobility! I can’t kill you yet, I need you to live to see the results of my work,” Voldemort shook his head, suddenly serious and composed, impassive. “So, no, there is nothing that could be exchanged for the life of my enemy.”

“Haven’t you avenged yourself enough, by killing his parents and his brother? Harry has nothing left…”

“Stop,” he cut the headmaster off and turned his head to watch the darkness of the forest. “I do not wish to listen to your whining anymore. However… However, there might be a chance for the Boy-Who-Lived.”

“Tell me,” Dumbledore asked in a hollow voice. Somehow, he knew that whatever Tom would offer – he wouldn’t be able to accept it.

“You will resign and leave Hogwarts forever.” Voldemort’s eyes sought out the pale blue ones of the old man, and he grimaced in a twisted pleasure of seeing denial and resentment in them. “Then I will spare Potter, but I won’t let him die in peace, he would have to stay by my side and suffer until the end of days.”

“You know very well, that I cannot accept this,” the wizard breathed out, desperately trying to pull himself together.

“Of course, you would never sacrifice so much for a life of one petty, useless orphan, would you now? You never sacrificed much less for me, why would you suddenly make an exception for Potter?” He smiled evilly. “Go back to your beloved school, Dumbledore, watch your children cower in fear and grieve your own mistakes, grieve your arrogance, grieve Potter’s real death. For you wouldn’t be able to hide him away from me anymore, I will find him no matter what.”

“Tom, can’t you see how deeply have you fallen into the darkness? It has tainted your soul beyond recognition, you are destroying yourself inside out,” Dumbledore murmured sadly, watching his once student with pity.

“Don’t act like you know me, old man,” Voldemort threw over his shoulder, as he walked back into the shadows to leave. “You know nothing of my soul and of the true darkness. And don’t forget, that whoever tries to hide or protect Potter from me – they die as well.”

**XXX**

Harry lay coiled on his side and cried silently, listening in to the quiet noises behind him – Hermione and Ron were once again looking after him. He couldn’t find it in himself to apologize for running away, but they didn’t seem mad at him, if anything, Hermione pitied him even more now. The two sat at the table and worked their way through some textbooks. Harry had no wish to converse, nor was he interested in what they had to say, for least of all he wanted pity and compassion. Thus, he lay with his back turned to them and mourned Allen’s death, staring blindly at the pattern of the sofa’s cover.

“I hate potions, why do Aurors have to pass exams in potions?!” Ron whispered vehemently, dropping one of his heavy books on the table helplessly.

“I knew I shouldn’t have helped you with your OWLs, you barely managed through the NEWTs,” Hermione shook her head chidingly, not looking up from her own read. “Why do you even want to be an Auror, Ron?”

“Well, I’m not rich like Malfoy, to simply sit down on my arse and do nothing, I have a family to support after all. I can’t be a quidditch player either, you saw me… I’m pathetic,” he whined, reddening and pouting whimsically. “Fred and George have been trying to open their own shop for several years now, and I know, I just know it could work out, but I have no money to invest into it, to help them... Basically, there is nothing else I could do, but fight criminals.”

“You want everything to happen in a snap of fingers, while Auror position needs a lot of work to be put into it. I don’t want to discourage you or anything, but you should reconsider your choice or pull yourself together and pass all the exams with flying colours. Which is very hard, since you never paid attention in school,” Hermione drawled wanly and closed her book with a low thud. “Besides, fighting criminals is pointless nowadays. Death Eaters are unbeatable, worse, they have no honour and stoop very low, in order to kill their opponents. It’s simply dangerous.”

“Well, what are you going to do as a lawyer then?” he asked angrily. “Laws don’t exist in their eyes, you can’t summon them to the court room and charge them of any of their crimes.”

“I will be able to at least pay my bills and help your family out, while Auror’s job doesn’t promise any kind of a stable, necessary income. Especially now, that the Ministry is being constantly suppressed by the Dark Lord.”

“Fair enough,” he admitted reluctantly and looked away in shame. “But what am I to do then? I am absolutely useless…”

“Maybe you should ask Crouch’s advice? He used to be an Auror after all, and he was a good one as I’ve heard. Maybe you could become his apprentice in Defense?” Hermione offered, however, she sounded uncertain.

“Yeah, like I can simply come up to Crouch and say ‘Blimey, Barty, how about we have a drink or two at The Hog’s Head and discuss how you’re gonna make me your assistant’? You yourself are afraid of him,” Ron huffed, crossing his arms over his chest and shivering uncomfortably. “He is even worse than Snape. The bat simply keeps sneering at you all the time and insults you every time you mess up, but that’s all. And Crouch is actually terrifying. Always so calm, so quiet, so… Unaffected. I mean, I get goosebumps every time he asks me something, I thought I’d faint when we had Defense exams!”

“Yes, he is very dangerous and cold-blooded,” Hermione agreed, shuddering too. “However, you can’t deny that he is an amazing teacher.”

“Hands down the best teacher I have ever had!” Ron exclaimed excitedly and blushed, when the witch shushed him, gesturing in Harry’s direction.

“I think you should at least try and ask him,” she pressed on. “Maybe he would give you some useful advices on passing an Auror exam…”

“That’s doubtful.” Ron stood up and stretched his back. “I think it is time to have lunch, don’t you agree? Oi, Harry,” he addressed the boy, seeing that he stirred on the sofa and finally rolled onto his back, “Wanna eat? I can make us all sandwiches and chips, and we have jam and chocolate bars from a muggle shop.”

“Sounds nice,” Harry sighed in reply and slowly got up, rubbing on his puffy, teary eyes.

“Do you feel at least a little bit better?” Hermione asked him worriedly, when the redheaded boy rushed to the kitchen. “Maybe you want me to give you a potion?”

“I doubt I will ever feel better,” he said bitterly, coming closer and sitting down at the table as well, looking impassively over the strange drawings of diagrams and texts written in old, stylish fonts. “I don’t want any potions, thank you.”

His gaze fell onto the girl’s magical wand, that lay between the blank parchments and her empty teacup. Seeing a spark of curiosity in his tired eyes, Hermione hurried to offer her wand to him – he was a squib after all, no harm would come if he just holds it for a moment.

“You may take it. When wizards use magic wands, they feel connected to them. The stronger and the better is the connection, the more powerful is the wizard,” she explained.

“But as a squib I am not supposed to feel anything of a sort?” he confirmed. She nodded pitifully.

Harry picked the wooden stick up, wondering absentmindedly, if this wizarding folk also rode brooms, like they showed it in children books and comics. Oddly enough, as soon as the sturdy, thin body of a wand got into his hand, it started vibrating with such a force, as if he was covered in hundreds of mobile phones.

“Don’t worry, you might not have any magic, but you have your rightful place in our world, with us,” Hermione tried to encourage him, having had mistaken his scowl for regret, when, in fact, he felt… Confused and secretly elated. The fact that the wand responded to him could only mean one thing, and he didn’t have to be an experienced wizard, to know what it is...

“I’m fine,” he replied dryly and let go of the wand, that became very hot in his grip.

Suspicion crept into his soul, however, he couldn’t quite decipher it just yet, but it was there. What if he was a wizard after all? What if… People sometimes lost their memories or ability to walk or talk, only to rediscover them later. Could this be his case as well? Could he have forgotten somehow, perhaps, he had a head trauma when that big bad evil wizard tried to kill him, or maybe when he flew out of the car? Staring wildly at the wooden stick, Harry berated himself for hoping for something that was not possible, and simultaneously prayed that it could be true, that one chance out of a million turned out to be his chance… If he was actually a wizard, he could do so much… He could escape this horrid life for good, he could have as much money as he’d like, he could have as much drugs as he’d like…

“Hey, hey, here is lunch by yours truly!” Ron burst into the room with trays floating ahead of him and a huge bottle of Cola in his free hand. “I lo-o-ve this stuff,” he told Harry excitedly, when he noticed other’s surprised glance.

“It’s not very healthy, though,” Hermione wrinkled her nose, pouring more tea into her cup.

Harry silently accepted a sandwich, that the redhead offered him, and carried on watching the two wizards. “How is that possible, that there are rich and poor people in your world?” he asked suddenly, making both Ron and Hermione stop chewing their food and look up at him in confusion. “I mean, you are wizards, right? You have magic, like… Why can’t you make money with magic and have everything you want?”

“This is exactly why we are still wary of telling muggles about our existence,” Hermione said, after she thought about it for a moment. “Ordinary people follow the same logic you’ve just voiced, but it’s not that simple. Magic can’t be used for your own benefit, it can’t be used for corruption…”

“I disagree,” Ron interrupted. “Harry’s question is quite fair. Not talking about the actual money, but everything else right now. Don’t the dark wizards use magic to fulfill their sick desires? The Dark Lord used it to make himself immortal, jeez, this is going against nature itself!”

“But abusing magic is very dangerous, it always pays back in the ugliest ways,” Hermione put her sandwich aside and crossed her arms over her chest. “The Dark Lord looks like a monster now, because whatever he’d done to himself is unnatural, is evil and inhuman, and this is how magic punished him for it. The Death Eaters? Most of them are insane because they use magic to hurt others so much, that it started ruining their minds in return. I mean… Magic is not just a tool, Harry,” she looked at him very seriously. “It is alive and it is not to be fooled with.”

“There is a bank in our world, Gringotts,” Ron added, “They monitor the amount of money that circulates the market and all that stuff. If you suddenly become rich without any sort of legal reason behind it, they would investigate it and would certainly punish you. There are a few financial criminals in our prison. We have a lot of thieves too,” he shrugged his shoulders, grimacing sourly. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that much, you were born to a very wealthy family and you inherited everything.”

“And that Voldemort guy, is he rich too? Why is everybody so scared of him and can’t do anything about him?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest,” Hermione drawled thoughtfully. “I think he is sponsored by his followers, who are mostly old, wealthy families.”

“He doesn’t need money,” Ron huffed, blushing from both fear and disgust, “He looks like he can’t even eat like a normal human being. I mean… Why would a rotting corpse need money? It’s not like he needs to pay for new clothes or shampoo, you know…”

“What does he look like?” Harry was genially curious by this point. Besides, he wanted to see what Allen’s murderer looked like.

“I don’t think you should see this,” Hermione tried, but Ron was already passing an old newspaper with a picture of a fight at the Ministry, that transpired several years ago. The last time anybody saw Voldemort.

Harry was shocked at first to see that the hand-coloured photograph was moving. It took him a few minutes to simply get used to the special effects and to take in all the details of what was going on. Only after that did he notice a tall dark figure making its way through the fighting crowd towards Dumbledore. Voldemort. It was hard to see his face, hidden in the darkness of the hood, but Harry could make out a beastly looking features, that barely resembled human – the skin seemed to be badly damaged, as if burnt by acid, and here and there he could see glimpses of small scales that covered it. And the eyes – the eyes of this creature were crimson red and shone so ominously it was hard to look at them for a long time…

“Wow, he’s damn ugly,” was all he could say aloud, while inwardly he thought he had never seen anybody so scary and so repulsive before. However, Harry didn’t feel afraid, he felt disgusted, disturbed, curious and… Not afraid. This was a killer, a maniac, who murdered Allen in cold blood, but he didn’t seem to be all that terrifying after all.

“Yeah, nobody has seen him after that fight. He almost killed Dumbledore, but stopped at the last second. Said something about letting the old man live to reap what he’d sawn or something like that,” Ron muttered, trying to set the newspaper on fire with his angered glare.

“He is an extremely powerful warlock, Harry,” Hermione said quietly, not looking at the picture, clearly too disgusted and scared. “And you should be very, very careful. Even professor Dumbledore is afraid of him, and that is saying something. The Dark Lord is very dangerous, his dark magic had turned him into an insane man. All he desires is total control over everyone and revenge, only Merlin knows for what. The worst thing, is that he is a fascist, he believes that people like me,” she pointed her finger at herself, blinking often to hold back tears, “Are dirt and scum and must be eliminated, because their blood is an insult to magic.”

“But why?” Harry found it hard to imagine that such a thing even existed in the world anymore.

“Because I was born to two muggles, none of my parents or relatives are magical,” she explained. “I am so called ‘muggleborn’, but he and his followers call me ‘mudblood’, because they despise muggles, they think themselves to be a superior race.” She sighed, calming herself down. “I am a slave and a lowlife, nothing in their eyes. And they kill people like me without any hesitation, like cockroaches.”

“That’s really weird and sick,” Harry drawled, looking between the girl, the boy and the newspaper.

“Yeah, Dumbledore thinks that if we assimilate with muggles and teach them about magic and they teach us about their world, we would be able to get rid of these prejudices, but the Dark Lord wouldn’t let this happen. He insists that muggles are a threat and cannot be allowed to know of magic’s existence. This is also a reason why he hates muggleborns, because he is certain that their families are putting us all at a huge risk…” Ron sighed as well, shaking his head.

“Hmm…” Harry rested his head on his crossed arms, wondering what could have caused this. Why was this Lord so adamant to hide away from these muggles and just why was he a danger to Harry, who had nothing to give or to lose, had nothing up his sleeve to actually change anything in any of the worlds or his own pathetic life…

His gaze followed the movements of Ron’s hands as he watched the redhead perform magic as if it was nothing, as if it was something trivial and insignificant. His eyes concentrated on the wand, that was laid down next to the plate with sandwiches. If he only had an opportunity to be left alone with it for a while… Then what?

That night Harry saw strange dreams, dreams about a maze with no exit, with black shadows in its corners that kept stalking him. He was certain they had eyes – blood red eyes. And every time he would turn his back on them and try to run, he would crash into Allen’s rigid, ice cold body seated down on the ground, with a lifeless expression on a bloodied face of a boxer who was a human no more. A pile of meat and insides – that was what Harry saw and screamed and screamed on the verge of his lungs but nobody could hear him.

Morning came as salvation. And he terribly needed to get high.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for spelling and grammar mistakes.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for spelling and grammar mistakes


End file.
